Enjoy The Ride

There are times when I am just sitting on the couch talking to my husband or kids, laughing, just living life, and it hits me all over again how blessed I am.

I am a broken vessel.

I have made so many mistakes in my life.

As a wife.

As a mother.

As a human.

I am flawed.

But man am I blessed!

I'm so grateful that God can take such a messed up, wretch of a person and create something beautiful from my mess.

Every day is a difficult battle to make the right choices.  Pressures at work, people that I have to interact with on a daily basis try my patience.  Most days, I fail.  Most days I give in to the tendency to complain and whine and sometimes, I even catch myself engaging in gossip.  On particularly rough days, I come home and am faced with another challenge:  to not let my stress and anxiety dictate how I treat those I love the most.  And again, I find myself losing that battle.

Life gets so busy sometimes.  I feel like Kris and I hardly ever get any real time alone together.  It is something that is so vital to our marriage, and yet so often, we forget to be intentional about it.  We pass one another in the night, consumed by our own busy-ness and stress.  We tend to the kids and find ourselves annoyed with them more than the time we spend cherishing them.  Sometimes we forget that they are only with us for a short time.

We become consumed by me.  By us.  By wanting to have some privacy.  Some time alone that isn't at midnight when we're both too tired to truly be intimate and connect physically, instead of a quickie before sleeping for a few hours then getting up and starting the day all over again.  We forget that this too shall pass.  That we need to hold onto this time that we have our family together under one roof.

There are so many little things that I find irritating.  And yet, in just a few short years, I recognzie that I will miss the endless questions after we put the kids in bed, or the constant "Mom!  Mom!  Mom!"  One day the house will be quiet and we'll move into a phase in our lives where we have more time alone than we know what to do with.

Moments like these where I am thinking clearly about the big picture remind me to appreciate what I have right now.  I just try to be present in this moment and enjoy my family for what it is - messes, bad attitudes, hormonal teenagers, busy schedules and all.  At the heart of my family is a love for one another and God that brings me so much joy.

Too often I lose sight of that truth.  I need moments like these to remind myself to slow down.  To enjoy the ride.