The year of the wedding, as I said earlier had to start with me. For the sake of all involved, that was the best place to start. They’d all thank me later. You’ve heard the saying “if Momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy”, well it’s a possibility that the first person to say that lived in my house.
I am a planner, I am a problem solver, I am a type one on the Enneagram and I am someone who lives well off into the future. If for a split-second life is wonderful you will find me wondering where in the future the axe will drop. Sounds negative I know, but in my little world it really isn’t. I will just be in the future looking for the axe so that I can prevent it from falling. Because worrying about the future always fixes everything, right? Uhm “No”. But that’s what I do. I’m a fixer and I love nothing better than to fix it before it happens. I like to call it planning.
The problem with that is we all really have nothing more than right now, what is in front of us at this very moment. Worrying about the future or living for the future really isn’t doing anyone, certainly not me, any good. Here is my problem (well one of them), living in the present but not really super sure of what you are being present for won’t do you much good either. That is where I needed to begin.
My task above all others this year was not to miss a thing. I was to be present, grateful, and in every moment. Easy right? As my very best friend so often tells me, I needed to learn to be where my feet are. Here’s a little bit of free advice. When you start to panic – look at your feet. Literally look down at your feet. That buddy of mine – we send each other feet selfies all the time. There is something calming about looking at your feet and making sure your mind and your soul are in the same place.
I’ve never been very good at identifying the beauty in the present. This was a new realization for me. Until the year of all of the celebrations I had never really put my finger on this before. I’d find myself at the end of the party, the graduation, the vacation looking back and thinking “well that was fine, nothing went wrong, it was exactly as I anticipated, and everything was a success” and that was that. That was just fine.
My daughter just graduated from college! Well of course she did. She’s smart, she’s competent, and she attended four years of classes. What else was supposed to be the outcome? I never doubted she would graduate. Those moments when she was walking across the stage - “Was it great? Was it wonderful?” I remember asking myself these questions. The answer would be “it was just fine, and I’d be off to the next thing in my mind. It’s hard to know if something is great, if it’s wonderful, if you have no idea what you are looking for it to be, if you don’t identify what you are hoping for. It may be a simple task for some, but for me it was not. I wasn’t hoping for my daughter to graduate. I was hoping for a day where she was oh so happy, felt accomplished and proud, and was beyond excited about the future she had prepared for. I just hadn’t thought about it before the graduation. I think I missed it. I think I knew I was missing it.
It was pointed out to me once that in order to get to the great, the wonderful, I needed to identify what I was looking for. What would make it great? We had just recently hosted a large party at our house. So many family and friends filled the walls of our home. I was asked to revisit that evening. What made it wonderful, what did I love about it? What did I maybe miss? Identifying those things and then taking the time in that moment to be aware of them happening takes you from just fine to a whole new level of joyful in an instant, but if you are like me, it takes practice. Lots of practice.
You can walk in my front door and see right down the hall to the back door and out onto the porch. I think it’s called a shotgun house because you could stand at the front door and shoot a shotgun right out the back door. I love my home. I love absolutely every square inch of it. It’s an ongoing, never ending project of course, but that’s ok, it’s our ongoing project. It’s my happy place. What I loved about the party at my house was the bustle of interaction amongst our families from one end of my house to the other spilling right out onto the back porch. I loved setting up for the party and then seeing our house just work so well. I simply loved people enjoying my home, our home. I had never acknowledged before how much joy that truly brings me. Now, with my new-found realization, when we have people to our house I try to remember to stop. I try remember to experience it in that moment. I try remember to soak it in. I say try because it’s still not easy, but it’s the best I can do. Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I still miss it.
That wedding again – it started all of these realizations so bear with me if there are initially an awkward amount of references to it. Life was starting to get crazy and it was the middle of summer when Jim and I went to the lake for some alone time away before the wedding craziness really got into full steam. Just the two of us. He was on the dock fishing surrounded by water on three sides. He was in his happy place for sure. I sat behind him on the dock with my pad and pen. He knew I had him right where I wanted him and he had no escape if he was to continue fishing that morning. Thankfully he was willing. I’m not sure he even minded. We spent the better part of the morning sharing with each other what our hopes and dreams were for the day of our daughter’s wedding. Not only was it such sweet conversation, but it brought some clarity to what we hoped it would be. On Katie’s wedding day we could both watch for those moments when our hopes and dreams were taking place and find the joy while being present, showing up. Again an easy task for some, but for me it had been just too easy to miss those moments if I wasn’t careful. They can pass you by like the blip on the radar and you don’t get them back.
I love family weddings more than anyone. My family is an incredibly fun bunch of people and we love to be together. I'm not sure anything is more fun for me than a family wedding. Now, I’m a terrible dancer and we don’t dance much, but I do love it when we do. One of my hopes for the night was just one sweet dance with my husband. I wanted that time where for just a moment that night it might seem like the world around us stood still and we would be surrounded by family and friends yet it might feel as if nobody else was there but us. Remembering our conversation that day on the lake we had that dance. We had that dance and I was present for it knowing that it was a moment in the making since the day Katie was born. Someone snapped a photo of that moment. I framed it and I look at it almost every day. What it captured wasn’t simply just a dance, it was that moment and it was great. It was wonderful and I didn’t miss it!
Sometimes we are so busy just getting through life that we miss the moments. One of my new life goals was to stop missing them. To spend good work identifying more hopes and more dreams and to spend more time seeking them out. I just don’t want to miss anymore moments.
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