When 'real' becomes 'reality'...

I love when I am having a great dream and it's so real I actually feel the emotions...but then you get woke up and you are like dang! You try to go back to sleep, but it's too late...your dream is over.
Then there are times I have had a nightmare that also felt real and left my heart racing, tears streaming, gut wrenching pain, and the sweet relief of being woke up can't come quickly enough. It's the welcome of reality that's so refreshing.

I have also experienced tremendous joy while awake so much so that I sometimes think I should pinch myself to make sure it's for real. I have also walked the path of horror in life where I would beg to wake up...that it not be true.

I recently lost a sweet friend who treasured an entire year of memories for me to cancer. She was my first college roommate and was a part of me growing up and becoming me. I felt great regret when I heard...why hadn't we stayed closer, I should have said more, I should have been there, etc. I felt all those things you feel when it's too late...

Kel passing made me aware of the fleeting moments before me. About how my tomorrow's aren't guaranteed. To love without limits. To take each day and make it count. I don't want to leave regretting or questioning. I wanna leave learning growing loving being loved and spreading laughter and joy. I lived too many days waiting to be woke up...now it's time to live and feel the need to pinch.

Let's make reality the best we can.

Really?

I am embarking on some new territory lately and find myself constantly thinking...really? Is this really my life? Was this really the plan? I find some things exciting yet terrifying at the same time. It's exciting to think of going back to work and yet terrifying at the same time. I am scared to leave my little kaytlee. I cherish every moment I have had home with her. She is an angel that has done wonders for my soul. I worry about what job I will find and how it will handle school activities for my darling Kynlee. I have been so blessed to be able to attend all of her school functions and take her everywhere she needs to go.
Really? Ugh.
But I am really blessed to have family here that will fill in the gaps whatever job I take uncovers. My mom is always up for keeping the little ladies or driving them to and from. Scott's parents are here and able to help as well as Scott's sister whom my girls love. So I am blessed. What if I lived far away from family with no help and no extra hands?
Really? Yes.
I am making changes and they are scary and the unknowns can almost make me crazy if I let them. I have to just take this one day at a time remembering its out of my control and that God will place me exactly where I need to be.
Really? This is hard.
Really? I need to believe.

Reality Bites

There was always a debate in my marketing classes. I would ask my students each year whether the media mimics society or if society mimics the media. It's a tough call. I see both ways but I would say nine times out of ten its the latter.
There have been a few movies that I have seen that punched me in the gut with reality. 'White Oleander' is one...it was one movie I left thinking wow...how could that have seriously got worse. What more could any one person endure. Even that film though eluded to a happy ending. Another movie/book was Nicholas Sparks 'A Walk to Remember' within its portrayal of undying teenage love and devotion was the reality that you can't always love or pray the evil of cancer away.
I feel like typically us regular folks are working towards or looking for what the media has so clearly and repeatedly laid out for us. We measure successes and such along this high lines. Really only few people can ever meet or even get close to that.
My favorite place in the world is New York City. Why? I guess because I spent an entire childhood on a farm admiring its glory through movies and Christmas parades. I was a little nervous to finally go and see it myself for fear it wouldn't be what I wanted, but New York City did NOT disappoint. It lives up to its hype, and maybe that's why I love it so much.
In my life I am discovering that I don't always know what's going to happen, how my story is going much less how my story will end. At this moment it feels like those movies that leave you punched in the gut. Right now there are very few parts of it I can look at and say...I am blessed. Mainly because there are big parts that need mending and healing. Those are the parts that today I feel like bite.
It's like I said before...I have to remember when in a valley I 'have' to keep going to ever reach a mountaintop. So if ever you have been in my shoes please share the wisdom, and if not be thankful that you have a reality worth making a movie about. :)

Real Life

It's hard to imagine that life isn't always funny like a sitcom or always lovey like a love story. I have had to really come to terms with my 'expectations' of life. My life.
I am victim of the things of this world...I want the 'picture perfect' life. I want the dream marriage where it's full of passionate love and heart-gripping devotion. I want the perfect children with perfect health and brains and athleticism. I want a great job where I am happy and achieving something. I want the nice home with all it entails.
How horrific is that truth I just laid out? I mean really...it's disgusting. I know it's yet sometimes I still want it. The truth is though...my life is its own type of perfect. With all things there will be problems...in my marriage with my children my job hunt my home. Really the only thing I truly view as perfection are my girls. Their beauty and overall being in my opinion is perfect! I know they don't mind all the time and that they have inherited all my yucky illnesses, but they are perfect. It's only in them that I really see God. I see the gift they are and the greatness of his miraculous ability to create life.
What I need to do is take down my expectations from what I have seen in movies or on television, or read in books and take a look at the truth around me. I have to realize I can't meet those expectations and neither can anyone else in my life. I need to focus on the reality of my purpose and role here on this earth. It's not to achieve perfection but to love the Lord and help raise children to Love the Lord.
Real life is full of problems and imperfections. Real life can sure be funny and it can sometime be romantic, but real life is ever changing and will enevitably have valleys and mountains.
I am struggling right now to embrace my real life and to understand when in a valley I must keep going to ever reach a mountaintop.

What's this?

So I think all little girls are misled. We are set up to expect fairy tales from our earliest years. We are told of 'prince charming' and all his saving ways. Then when we are older we are scolded for dare having a thought that we aren't the ones to save ourselves.

Do you see where this is just a bad idea? Yet, here I am reading the same stories to my kids and tucking them into bed with the 'hope' of fairy tales. Why? Why not read them the news or the statistics regarding divorce rates, college graduates, chances of making the team, unemployment rates, cancer statistics, so on and so on? We don't do it because we know that reality will come soon enough and so we participate in the endearing protection of that sweet innocence that will all too quickly be robbed of their perfect mind.

It's tragic really.

I am devastated by my own discovery, but the thing that truly crushes my heart is the waiting and worrying over when their fairy tale world will be 'reality stricken' too. I would almost give my own life if I thought it could keep them from it. As you will soon discover...my mission is to keep them in a fairy tale as long as possible for fear of what will happen when they are no longer.