Knowing your Limitations and getting your life to fit them in

This has been months in the making in my head. A person extremely close to me had a major break down and it was a huge shock to me. She has been months healing now. I've been wondering: How did I not see it coming? What caused it? What can I do to help her? What did I do to contribute? and What can I learn from it? This is where I am at with it....Knowing your limitations and advocating for them. I sort of wanted to put my thoughts out there to see if they seem accurate or off base.

The older I get the more I think of "happiness" as really being about finding a personal balance in life. Joy is its own thing all together but happiness, and the pursuit thereof, is a big part of being human these days. Its not good enough to survive we want to live happily.  But that can be a finical thing to find and the media and commercial power houses try to tell us that happiness is spending our money on things that will make them money...weather it be a new car, a perfect body, a picture perfect home, the smartest kids, the most relaxing or exciting vacations,.... It can be really confusing. I mean seriously it is nice to have those things...but are they really your personal key to happiness? The longer I live and the less I can even entertain the messages of the commercial industries I've found its in finding a personal balance. For me I am at my happiest when I have certain routines established that are not too hard to maintain. (Wake up early, go for a run, do some light stretches, and a little strength training, scriptures study, and a little journal entry. Oh, that is bliss to me!) Then the rest of my day is full of purposeful stuff but nothing with major stress like you have to do this by this impractical time or the entire church Christmas party will be a bust!!! - sort of nonsense. Then my evenings are a little laid back with homework, family dinner, Stewart home for all of it, and then nice family time like a walk, or a quick little show, or reading a pile of books all together. That doesn't need to happen every day but if that could be the norm more often then not then that'd be the happiness I could enjoy forever.

But lets be real. Our "happy life" comes at a cost. And often things happen which take that away from us that are out of our control. Maybe Stewart will die tomorrow and he will never be home again...what then?  I realize too, more and more, that life will make you bitter and feel as though you have missed out if you aren't flexible and malleable, but there are some things worth fighting for, somethings that if we give up on for too long will hurt our overall well-being. As much as we don't have total control of our lives, our choices are important and have huge effects. With that, every life choice we make we have to compromise on something else...you cant have it all. So I look at where I am right now and ask, "Can I have that happiness? Right now?" The answer is no. But in six months it could be, maybe if  things go well it could be. That was my reality six months ago and it was really nice.

I think about my future and I want that happiness. I realize that I need my husband home a lot to be super happy - to be the best sort of mom and wife I can be. I really need him home for dinner. I really need him home on the weekends. I need him to have real relationships with all of us. I am thinking that perhaps that needs to be a family standard we set as we go forward in picking careers and such. Its so easy to let a "boss" dictate what your family time will look like and then feel trapped by it. Families need money to operate and that weight is ever heavier with each passing year. Can we have enough money and have him work hours that are good for our family relationships too? What price will we pay to have him home? We've been in school, and now training, since we met 9 years ago. Its always been "well that's just what we have to do now to have it better someday." And that "someday" was vague at best. As it is a little closer in sight and my youthful gungho-ness wheres off I really want to go forward with the next chapters of our lives with a real idea of what our "someday" is like so our standards, priorities, and our limitations are a consideration today, now.

Obviously for us our someday is a house full of kids. That has a million and one implications for us, it means "peace" is a relative term, and that cleaning, budgeting, being a taxi, and worrying about them will be a major part of my life for at least the next 20 years. I am willing to pay that price to have that joy. For me our house needs to be pretty. It doesn't need to be the most beautiful house ever but it needs to be pretty and decorated. Even my dorm room was completely decorated...I mean I had 4 plants including a beautiful, real orchid by our sink....my surroundings need to be aesthetic but I don't need a mansion or high-end, just pretty. I know that can sound petty but I learned that last year as I packed away our decorations way in advance for our move....I got depressed. I stopped liking being home as much, I stopped wanting to clean....funny huh?  Obviously as stated before I need my hubby home for regular family time and I need "me time" in the mornings. So what does that mean? It means my husband will probably not be the richest radiologist in town, it means my kids wont be each doing three different sports a year, it means the gospel has a chance of really being a big part of our daily lives as we aren't rushing here and there.

I think if I faced a "forever" with those things not being available to me I would sort of break down. I'm realizing with a lot of humility that I have serious limitations. I wonder if you know what your limitations are and How do you know what they are? I wonder how you fight to have a life that respects them. Do you need spontaneous adventure? Do you need big events? Do you need sports to be a big part of your lives? How do you protect those things when life gets crazy? When life gets really crazy how do you know which ones can be cut and which ones must stay?

The happiest people I know live lives full of the things they care about the most at a cost they are happy to make. What is your "someday" like? And when do we realize that our someday is happening right now? When and how do we make our lives fit what we need it to be?