What's "Supposed" To Be

It's been a crazy few weeks. Between Christmas, packing, moving, unpacking, Christmas parties, decorating, cooking, buying/crafting gifts and working full time...I have barely been able to keep it all together. Somehow I have managed to get to the right thing at the right time and most everything is put away at our new house. I consider this an accomplishment! Although this is the holiday season and we have a new home, I feel like we are holding on by a thread trying to make it all work and keep it all together. It's not exactly the picture perfect season that I had imagined. And that bugs me.

I don't know why, but we get these flawless images in our minds of what these transitions or phases of life should look like...and that just isn't reality. I recently read a quote that stuck with me and I felt like I could really identify with these words: "What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it's supposed to be."

I remember moving into our small basement apartment almost a year ago and thinking about how "imperfect" it was. It lacked basic things like a dishwasher, oven, and kitchen. It was functional but bare. I felt like this was somehow going to taint our first year of marriage because it wasn't the house I have envisioned as what a young married couple should live in. I had this perfect little picture in my head of what was supposed to be, and this didn't fit. That dinky little space quickly became more than just our residence or a pain in the butt. It became our home. We made it cozy and comfy. We made it ours. It had everything that we really needed, not wanted but needed. I thought so poorly of that place in the beginning, but through that not so glamorous situation, I began to see beauty unfold. When we packed it all up on Friday afternoon, I stood in each room and was reminded of how small our place actually was, how simple and unsophisticated each room was, and how the only things that actually filled this place were us and our things. All it really was were 2 empty rooms and a single bathroom. Yet, it was everything that wasn't supposed to be gone right.

I was surprised at how sad I was to leave it. We had spent our first year of marriage between those walls. We had so many great times and memories there. A lot of difficult, but very valuable lessons were taught through that place. I grew very fond of our little basement apartment despite how different it was from where I originally thought we were "supposed" to live. In that moment, I realized it wasn't about the place. It wasn't about the imperfections. It wasn't about the expectations of what I thought a newlywed home should look like. It was about us making this past year our own, in our own way, in our own place, and in our own time. It didn't have to look a certain way to be considered a successful year full of love, laughter, and growth.

Letting go of that vision of what we believe our lives are supposed to be is the best thing we can do for ourselves. Forget the timeline, forget what's considered "normal", forget the expectations, and learn to appreciate what's right in front of your eyes. Focusing on how we believe a situation should look like takes away from how great the reality might be. So my life doesn't always appear exactly like I think it should...who cares? That little basement apartment taught me the lesson of throwing that perfect picture of what's "supposed" to be out the window and opening my eyes up to how beautiful what isn't supposed to be really is.

The memories captured in that little place will last a lifetime: