A while
back, a friend asked me to create this blog entry about what I would tell to
the younger version of myself. I thought
long and hard and had a really hard time coming up with just the right words,
worth reading. I guess that was the
first mistake I made…overthinking it. I
tend to spend far too much time worrying about how people will “take things”
before I just express what I’m truly thinking or feeling. Maybe that’s why my blog entries are so few
and far between. I talk myself out of
70% of them. Truth is, the spirit of God
speaks to the hearts of man, and each person receives what I share in a way
that speaks specifically to them, so my fear is unfounded, as fear often
is. But I digressed – back to me!
I spent a
lot of time after law school fantasizing about what it would be like to go back
to undergrad with the knowledge of the world that I have at the present. I wondered which guys I would’ve avoided, and
which ones I would’ve entertained. I
wondered what I would’ve “majored” and “minored” in, both literally and
metaphorically. I wondered what I
would’ve done after college, instead, and how that would’ve shaped who I have
become, versus the path that I actually took.
This way of thinking often leads to regrets and unrealistically
fantasies of how much better my life would’ve been if I made better choices –
mostly better financial decisions! But while
moping down “what if” lane, I’m often snapped back into the reality that is
present, and I think about how truly blessed I am in every way imaginable.
I think
about how I am heavy-laden with graduate school debt, and yet there isn’t a
single day that I go without my basic needs met, while still acquiring a lot of
my luxurious “wants.” I think about how
amazing my work culture is, and how I would not know how to appreciate it the
way I do, without all of my less than favorable work environments in the
past. I think about how my daughter is
my life-line and makes me a better person every single day, as I revel in the
joy of being her mom. What really gets
my praise party started is when I think about the absolutely, amazing man and
father that is my husband. It is like
God handcrafted him just for me, and there is no way I would be able to
actually appreciate that without all of the mismatched relationships of my
past. Talk about a paradigm shift!
