Learning to be real.

May you be filled with Joy today.  May your heart explode with thanksgiving.

I want to admit that I tend to live a few years down the road from where I am right now.  I have always been a dreamer and I forget to exist in daily reality.  Instead I keep my dreams as fond pictures of the life I want to live.  

While knowing where you want to go is vitally important to having a road map for success, it is not necessary to live as if those dreams have already come true.

If you tend to look behind you with rose colored glasses, perhaps you should check your daily thought process.  The last three years have been a giant deviation from what I thought our plan/dreams were.  I have trudged through, just waiting for the time comes to get back to family.  Waiting to return to real life.  

I have missed out on so much of our giant adventure, because I was stuck in regretting where we weren't.

I am incredibly grateful for what the last few years of our life have been.

I have walked with my children under the dripping leaves of a towering redwood.

I have set sail on the coolness of the sea and enjoyed the spray in my face.

I have wept from the depth of loneliness with only my husband's arms to hold me.

I have walked down wind blown city streets.

I have made friends with anyone who looks too long in my direction.

I have become far too comfortable with myself.

I have not worried if my house is clean.

I have been too close to seals and felt the spray from their backs as they rule their pier. 

I have clocked hours at the Santa Cruz boardwalk as my children run wildly through the sand.

I have learned to be okay in every situation and open myself, despite my fears.

I have watched my family grow as a solid unit.

I can look back and see how far we have come.  I can see how much farther we have to go.  I do not have it all figured out.  My life is not what I 'want' it to be.  I am, however, exceedingly grateful to be a part of this journey.  I love that I have been rid of my comfort zone and been placed in difficult and trying times that I may more fully make use of the resources which I have been given.

Today.  I hope you find things in your life which fill you with joy.  I hope you take a minute to be in a moment.  To feel it, to sense it, to be thankful for your breath, your friends, the weather, the beauty of what surrounds you.  Everything is fleeting.  There is nothing we can fully hold on to.  It will always be slipping from us.  

You will not one day have all you dreamt and 'arrive'.  Our lives are filled with all of the little things that make us 'real'.  

I hope you enjoy your moments, your day.  

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.” 
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit