Our Grateful Life

We all have hopes and dreams about how our life will be. We know the kind of friend, wife, mother, daughter we want to be. We dream about our careers. We decorate the house we've yet to buy. We plan the vacations we can't afford to go on. We buy new stationary and stamps but never write a single letter.

But the truth is all of those dreams and wishes and even fantasies are just that. They were never ours. I am not the friend, the wife or the daughter I want to be. I don't have the career I dreamed of as a child or even the career my mother may have dreamed I would have. The truth is my life has turned out almost nothing like I had envisioned.

And you know, that's okay. My friends are no more perfect that I am but I wouldn't change one thing about them (except I might move them all to Texas with me). My job may not be dazzling but I traded in private jets, million dollar weddings AND 60 hour work weeks. It was a fair trade, I think. My house isn't the biggest or the best but it's ours and we love it. I fall short every single day at being the best wife I could but I love Chris and I know he loves me. In seven years, we've learned how to take care of each other and how to give each other space. He believes in me and I believe in him. You can't ask for much more. Is it the movie romance I thought marriage would be? Nope but who wants all that hoopla anyway.

Whatever my hopes and dreams for the future are, they will stay just that. None of those are real either. None of those are mine. But I trust that just as He's done up to this point, the Lord will guide us and we'll be blessed every step of the way. Our marriage, our friends, our family, our home - all of those are far more wonderful than we deserve. We have always sought to follow the Lord's will for our lives and will continue to do just that. Would we rather has stayed comfortably where we were. Sure. But wow...we would have missed so much.

So today I am grateful for the dreams, hopes and fantasies that never came true and that will never come true. Those were never and will never be mine. What the Lord has given me...that's real and for that we are truly blessed.