Time for Change

For those few people closest to me, this is no surprise. I have spent the better part of the last year in a spiraling state of unhappiness. I have been down-right miserable with every aspect of my life--my marriage, my children, my home, my friendships and most importantly, myself and my place in the world.

I'm not really sure how it all started, but I finally reached the point that I was more than ready to run away from it all. My constant internal thought (and sometimes external statment) became "I just want to be anywhere but here." I'm not sure I even knew where "here" was, I just wanted to be as far away from anything familiar as I could get. The only thing I seemed able to do was focus on all of the negative things about my life and I never even saw the good things right in front of me. I would have told you that nothing good was happening to me, but I know that isn't true, I just couldn't see the good things because of my constant focus on the bad. The more that I focused on this negative life, the more bad stuff that kept coming my way.

We have spent a lot of time over the past few years lamenting the problems we've had with our house, which we moved into almost five years ago. It has been one totally unexpected disaster after another in this house and we have not-so-lovingly referred to it as " the money pit". You name it, we've replaced it. Look at an appliance, it has broken. I'm talking everything from thousands of dollars in pool repair to big dollar total bathroom remodel after the floor under the shower fell into my living room below it!

I have felt like a failure as a parent because our home was filled with anger and yelling and everyday was a battle with my oldest daughter and I felt like no matter what I did, I could not get the respect I felt like I deserved as the parent.
I began to fight against and even resent everything about my husband and marriage. Yes, I realize that might come as a shock to some, but I was feeling like everything was going wrong and he SHOULD be doing something to fix it. Both of us were in an aggressive, angry place and did a lot of blaming each other for why we were unhappy and our lives unfulfilled.

I just kept feeling that there must be more to my life than "this". "This", to me, was all those things that were holding me back and keeping me from doing/being something more, something greater than my current situation. Surely, God had something more in store for me, right? I just wanted to be me and to be known for something and be something that was me, something that made me special just for being me. I was sick to death of being "Barry's wife" or "the girl's mom". I resented every diaper I changed, every meal I cooked, every bed I made, every toilet I scrubbed, every time "had" to have sex with my husband. Everything in my life was a chore and everyday I came one step closer to leaving it all behind. How, you ask? Oh I don't know... hitch hike out of town with strangers? jump off the Mississippi River Bridge? just disappear one day? Take your pick; they all sounded like good ideas some days.

I faced an identity crisis, among other things, and decided that I have to figure out who I am and what I am and how this works with who I want to be. All I knew was that this current state of affairs was not working for me. I realized that if I want my life to change, then I'm the ONLY one that can do anything to make that happen. It just hit me one day and I was trying to blame someone else for my unhappiness. The great realization? I was giving up all of the power over my life to other people. Other people and outside circumstances were dictating how I felt about my life and how I was living the life that I had.

I brought all of this into my life ALL BY MYSELF. I forgot to be thankful for anything. It never crossed my mind to think about the good things I had and see that my good might actually out weigh my bad. I kept thinking about gloom and doom and how bad my life was and guess what? More bad things kept showing up in my life on a regular basis. I became buried in it and didn't see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Change is happening right now; and not only is it happening in me, but it is happening in those around me as well. There's no doubt that I am not the same person that I was for weeks ago, neither is anyone else living in this house. I think that that may be the greatest part of all. All of us have collectively taken a step back to evaluate where we are and where we want to be and I think we all recognized the dark place that we were in. Even my eight year old understands and is making changes in her own life.

I have not arrived...yet. But I am damn sure heading in the right direction. I know that if I want more joy to come into my life, I have to first be thankful for what I already have. No one can do that for me and that is something I know for sure.