Real Life!

Sometimes I have this idea in my mind of what life should be. As a teenager I imagined my life. I was married to a wonderful man with beautiful kids. I thought I would marry a Mexican, so in my mind my kids had dark brown eyes and tan skin. In real life I did marry a wonderful man, and although my kids are not bronzed they are beautiful.

As an adult I have this idea in my mind that I should have a beautiful clean home with kids that say please and thank you and play nicely with each other all the time. In real life I have a very nice home that has clean toilets for about a minute and clean laundry for maybe five minutes. My children love to tease each other just to see how the other will react, and would choose to go play with a friend over being home playing with their siblings.

As I began to get very frustrated yesterday with my life I began to realize that the problem is not with my life. The problem is with my expectation of my life. My life is just like everyone else. My kids sometimes fight and disobey, but other times they are so fun to watch as they play together and surprise me when they do what I ask the first time I ask them. Yes, my house is not perfectly clean, but we live here and play here, and are learning how to function as a family.

What we imagine our life to be is not always reality, but those ideas that we place in our minds gets us closer to what we desire. I will continue to want children that always obey and a home that is meticulously clean. If I stop hoping for those things I will lose my desire to discipline my kids and continue the every day clean up around the house. However, I realize how important it is to not get so caught up in this idea of what life should be and realize that this is REAL LIFE I am living, and for the most part it is REAL GOOD.