In my head life has some extremely opposing dynamics. I go between being incredibly grateful for the life that I have to crying on my bedroom floor because I don't always get what I feel I deserve. So in reality, I really haven't grown so far away from the 16 year old me that pouted when she didn't get her way.
I look around me and I am incredibly grateful, I have a husband, a child, a job, a house, a car, we even have two motorcycles.......and yet I am unfulfilled. Not all the time, just when it happens that either we don't have the money that we want or because somehow I can't get the date night I asked for or the respect that I think I deserve.
Deserve? When did respect become something that I deserved? I was alway taught that respect was something to be earned. That EVERYTHING was something to be earned with the exception of love and that love wasn't earned, but heck, you had to work for it. (Let me clarify I am not talking about the love of God).
I wish that I could sit here and tell you that respect is automatic and that love is a human being's natural state.
But neither one of those are true.
Now, for those of you reading this that know me, you know that by nature I am an incredibly emotional, sensitive, loving, and respectful creature. What you may not always get, or may not yet have experienced is the other parts of me, the bitter, prideful, ungrateful, give it to me now, selfish me. She's there, and man she can get angry and incredibly hurt sometimes.
I don't think that people have to agree with me all the time, I don't typically feel the need to tell people how to live their lives unless they ask but man now it's to the point where I can't say anything anymore without people claiming that I am stepping on their "rights", offending their point of view, and telling them who they should be.
Now I have sat back and taken a good look at myself, and let me say for the record, I am bossy, and pushy, and sometimes outright mean......it doesn't help that the majority of the time that these things are directed at myself.
Everything that I push onto others I have already pushed onto myself, the expectations that I have for others I have for myself, and all that love me, hear this....I'm a perfectionist. I am far from perfect, but I expect otherwise from myself.
Which leads me to why I felt the need to write this post. I think that I have certain unalienable rights past being given life in the first place, when quite honestly I don't. None of us do. Let me repeat that, none of us do.
As far back as man goes we have always had to work for anything that we wanted, we had to farm and kill our own food, we had to walk where we wanted to go until animals, bikes, trains, cars, and airplanes came into being, we had to provide for our children and raise them and give them food until they could do so for themselves.
So why is it now that we think that food should just be given to us, that we should all have cars, or mototcycles, or both. That other people are responsible for the children that we have, and how they behave or don't behave?
This isn't a hey, simplify your life speech, but it is certainly a hey, you wanted it, you have it, now take care of it and stop asking other people to take care of it for you talk.
And again, it is directed at myself more than anyone. My husband and I chose to buy a fixer upper, so the fact that it needs to much work and will cost money , and that frustrates me, well, that's on us. The fact that we chose to have 2 dogs, and 2 cats, and they need food, water, love, and medical attention, again, that's on us. The fact that we wanted a vacation this year, but we also needed new tires on every vehicle we own, and so we had to put off other projects, us again.
So the point I'm trying to make here is, the world owes me nothing. Everything that I have is either a blessing from God, or something that is in my life to grow me, or quite honestly something I chose to have.
I'm a big believer in simplifying, or so I say, but I have a closet full of clothese and I still want more, I have a car that I could take the bus to work but don't, I have a giant house that isn't finished, but I have a place to live, and more importantly a husband and a child that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world but our relationships don't just happen they take work. An extended family that surrounds me with love when I need it, and more friends than I can handle.
So what does the world owe me? Nothing. So when I whine about my life, lovingly tell me to be quiet, because the blessings out weigh the heartache and even when it's the reverse, it is still an amazing thing to be alive. I wasn't promised easy, or pain free, none of us were, so I suppose I should stop expecting that and live in the glory that God has given me and work to make my life and the lives of others better through the love that was placed inside me for that reason.
Focusing on that makes me understand that I owe God and people this love and if people choose to show it back then Amen. If they don't then I am loved enough to begin with and I shouldn't take it so personally because life isn't supposed to be about me, it's supposed to be about Him. When I look at it like that, then I can't help but humble out, take a step back, and remember that even if I don't feel it, or see it, He owed me nothing, but he really did give me everything.
K
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