Pin It!
Pinterest can be an evil, evil thing.
In case you don’t know, Pinterest is a social media site where you “pin” pictures of things you like to different “boards.” Sounds kinda lame, right? Well, it is the gateway to visual wedding planning, children rearing, travel guiding, and interior designing. It is the place where it feels like everyone else’s life is perfect and glamourous and yours is just mundane and cluttered.
Lately I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time browsing Pinterest for ideas of what I will do when I get to build my dream home. You know, the house with four bedrooms and a school room and a fireplace and gas stove and my own personal study where I will write all my masterpeices? It’s a great dream that I truly believe one day will become a reality, but alas, that reality is still quite a bit in the future. Quite a lot a bit.
Sometimes I get so focused on the future of my family that I forget to appreciate how great my life is in the now. I sit on my dilapidated old couch and look around and think about how much better everything will be later. I think about how much fun my children will be when they are older. I think about how accomplished I will feel when I have more books published. And I become discontent, when really I should be terribly grateful that I am sitting on a couch in my own house and have two kids at all.
So here I am, reminding myself that my life is great right now. I have two kids who are intelligent, adorable, amusing, and mine. I have a husband who loves his job, loves our kids, and loves me. I have a great family who is always there for me. We have enough money to eat good food and sleep in our own beds and turn on the air conditioner when it gets hot outside (always important to note if you live in Oklahoma!). I have a job that I love and my dream of become an author is a reality.
I just typed in the title to this post, and it reminded me of that adage that preachers say, “Today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present.”
But I’m not going to talk about that, because I think that’s a silly phrase. I’m just going to say that I’m thankful for my present. Tonight I am going to go outside and look up at the stars, and think about how vast the universe is and how amazing it is that I am even alive. And then I am going to go inside, and turn on Sean’s old IKEA lamp and snuggle under my flannel sheets and read a book and be thankful that all these things are mine to enjoy.
Anybody else out there ever feel the need to just stop, sit back, and remember to be grateful?