Several years ago, Daughter #2 went to visit her dad. He and his wife had made the life changing decision to sell the house he and I bought together when our daughter was an infant. This is a good thing. It was time to move on…personally, professionally. They needed a fresh start…I get that. I had long since let go of the house we shared. It represented a life I no longer lived and I had no emotional attachment to it.
I didn’t really know anything about the house they purchased. I have no idea what I expected it to look like other than something similar to what we’d always known. He is a frugal man with simple tastes. However, when our daughter arrived, she sent me a photo of something far different than I would have imagined. Grand. Palatial. Sprawling. Gorgeous!
I’m sorry to say, my very first response when I saw that stunning home was… “That was supposed to be MY house!” Never mind that I was in a happy relationship with Mr. Virgo. Never mind that all those years had passed. Somewhere deep in my subconscious, I had a mental image of what my life was supposed to look like. And it was supposed to be in THAT house.
It didn’t take long for me to shake that thought loose and follow it up with the clear realization that…along with that house, should I be living in it at the time, would come the husband that was in it. And I had long since realized we were not good for each other. Let’s just say, it was the final part of letting go of what I thought my life would look like at that point.
Truth be told…my sweet little two story, three bedroom, 2.5 bath home on the top of a hill at the foot of a mountain was nothing to sneeze at. It was the finest home I had ever lived in. It matched the little house I dreamed of escaping to when things got too hard to live with in that marriage. It was the little house I built once I recovered from the darkest moment of my life to that point. It was what I created after my second divorce when I felt lower than a snake’s belly.
I built and decorated that home and eventually welcomed Mr. Virgo to share it with me and my youngest daughter. I never dreamed there would come a day when I would gladly sell it to get away from the painful memories that lurked around every corner after Mr. Virgo suddenly died. My new “home” had wheels and I set out with new images of what life should look like.
Living in the camper and traveling around the country tore away every preconceived notion I had of what my life SHOULD look like. And it gave me ample peace and opportunity to CREATE the life I wanted. The WAY I wanted it. I finally came to a place where I didn’t need to have a man to make my life complete. I didn’t want someone to “complete” me. I came to understand that only God could do that. And that’s when I learned to find joy in the story I was actually living.
Mindfulness is an extraordinarily powerful tool for finding the joy in any given moment. Giving up preconceived notions of what your life SHOULD look like as opposed to reality goes a long way towards finding inner peace. That’s not to say you should give up on dreams. I’m not saying that at all. And if you are not in a good place and you are seeking a safer, more loving and accepting environment, you deserve to work toward that vision. I’m talking about turning disappointments into opportunities. I’m saying the grass on the other side of the fence just might be greener because it’s full of….ummmm…fertilizer. If you catch my drift.
Finding joy wherever you are planted is one of the biggest blessings you can attain in this life. Joy and gratitude will take you a long way. And when we keep that focus, more of that joyful abundance will filter in. Mr. FixIt and I may not have a ton of money, but we are exorbitantly wealthy in other things and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere or be with anyone else in the whole wide world than where we are in this moment.
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“Now you’ve got my feet on the life path, all radiant from the shining of your face. Ever since you took my hand, I’m on the right way.”
Psalm 16:11 MSG