Maybe the better word is pondering. Okaay.
I've been pondering about kids growing up, people changing, life throwing funny things your direction.
We really don't know what is going to come our way. It can be wonderful, amazing, fantastic things that make you soar and feel like the world is yours.
It can be painful things. Events that make you wonder what your purpose on earth is other than to just feel physical pain and emotional sorrow.
Or it can be sudden realizations that much of your life experience is completely yours for the making.
I actually hate that realization. Cuz if it's up to me what my life is like, then who the heck do I have to blame? Just kidding, sort of.
I have found myself wishing for a life that is more simple, less complicated, less busy and more fulfilling.
Owning a farm, Jeff working from home and 300 days a year of sun? Yes, I will take 1 awesome life please.
But if that order is not fulfilled, I can be happy with the life I have. Yes I can!
And in a year and a half, when I am 40 and all my kids are in school, what is my plan?
In 5 years when Kate and Julia are both at college, what is my plan?
When kids start getting married and having their own babies, but I still have 2 teenagers at home, what is my plan?
Yes, I have decided I need a plan.
Up until now, I have kind of let life happen to me. Which is fine. It has happened in many good ways.
But I'm feeling this funny tickle in my gut that is suggesting ever so kindly, that I need a plan. Otherwise I will feel like I'm wandering. And that is very unsettling.
Do I decide that 40 is the new 20 and become a fitness model like so many 40 somethings do these days? Uh, probably not.
Do I get a job? No stinking way. *ahem*. I mean, no thank you:)
Do I volunteer more at school since I will have time?
Do I stop answering the phone when people start calling me to babysit because they think I have all this free time now? Um, maybe?
Do I go back to school and finish my degree? Sounds interesting.
Do I enjoy the fact that no one is home with me during the day and the house can stay clean? Yes.
Do I bide my time until I have grandbabies and then just spend all my extra time travelling to see them?
(Kate holding my wonderful friend's adorable baby girl)
Grandbabies and visiting my children sounds kind of awesome. I mean, I could be a grandma in as little as 5 years. I probably won't be. But I don't know what life holds for my children either. Kate wants to finish school and go on a mission for our church, but she could be married at 19 and have a baby when she's 20. Who knows!! Wait. I can't think of that as a possibility. Sorry, being a grandma at 43 sounds too weird.
Anyway, I'm all curflumuxed about what my future holds. Can you tell?
Some of this has come from a recent diagnosis I got. Nothing serious. Just a little degenerative disc disease. But the person I have always been, the go get em, busy, million projects at once, accomplish whatever I set my mind to person I have been, has had to slow down because of horribly annoying and painful back issues.
And it's made me wonder what makes up my identity if I physically can't do many of the things that I have used to define myself?
If we had lots of money rolling in, then maybe I could be more like the ladies in previous centuries, where they don't actually do all the work themselves, but they manage everyone and tell their gardeners and cooks and housekeepers what to do.
That would be kind of fun. A huge rolling estate with stables and 40 bedrooms?
(The Breakers in Newport, RI. Previously owned by the Vanderbilts. I've been inside, it's amazing!!)
Or maybe I plop it in a chair and wait for my spine to fuse together? Nah. That would just annoy me.
So tell me, because I desperately want to know, that is if anyone is out there. I haven't blogged in so long that I feel like I'm talking to an empty room-tell me, do you have a plan? A life plan, a next five years plan, anything! Share please, give me ideas. Because life is not exactly how I planned it would be and I am having to readjust. It's thrown me off a little, and I'm ready for inspiration.
Go. Inspire me. Solve my dilemma. Please:)
Oh, Amy! If only a blog or FB post could provide the magic answers! I hit 40 this year and have some friends who will soon be grandmothers. Luckily, I started having kids later so I still have a lot of mothering ahead :>). Plus, the last 2 times I started making a "kids all at school time to figure out what's next plan," I got pregnant. So I'm scared to do it again! Lately I've been reading "The Happiness Project" and have been thinking a lot about my life and how I approach it. I think the key for me is to do Something. There isn't necessarily one big, right thing that I should do once I have more free time. I'm guessing that like college, marriage, and raising children, the Lord will direct me when the time comes. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI understand how you feel I feel this way every new year. I always thought my life would be a lot different. I would be married and have babies to snuggle but instead god has different ideas for me. I know what I want to do but am to scared to do it and do not have the money. I think you just need to enjoy your kids and husband and make the best of your situation. I wish I could be the inspiration your looking for but I struggle myself. Maybe you should open an account on Etsy and sell some stuff that you have made? The stuff you have posted on here has been really cute! Just hang in there and make each day count. My new passion is raising money for relay for life. Check out my blog to see what I am talking about :)
ReplyDeleteAll I know is that every time I try to come up with a plan I find out that God has a different one. I am through predicting where, what, and whys for my life! There are never answers, and I guess I've decided that I'm not supposed to know! I know not everyone will feel this way, but I really feel like living a good "today" will take care of "tomorrow." My mom was a grandma at 42. She was planning, after over a decade of chronic illness, to spend time with grandchildren and be the great wife and mother she'd always wanted to be during her years of sickness. Then instead she spent the next decade and a half serving in general church callings, traveling to places no one's ever heard of (Lubumbashi, anyone?). My grandma was single at 31--and this was in 1952!--had given up on marriage and was in a nursing master's program. She met a widower with three kids and ten years later was the mother of 10 children. Not in her plan. So I guess what I'm saying is that I believe the gospel plan is our plan. Keeping the commandments and living life through its principles will lead us where we should be, day by day! Now back to figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing right now...
ReplyDeleteOh Gerilyn, how I miss have your wisdom right down the path from me! I love your advice-living a good today will take care of tomorrow. Thanks dear friend!~
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