We bought our first house thinking we’d only be in it for a year. It’s cute and it worked for us, but 700 sq ft starts to feel verrrrry small very quickly when you start adding kids to the mix. Then the real estate market skyrocketed and upgrading no longer became a viable option for us so we stayed longer than anticipated. There was next to no storage space so the floors became a maze of various boxes and whatever mess the kids came up with. The kitchen table was also my “office” and always had a stack of papers and books with the laptop. We were constantly trying to get rid of stuff and declutter but it never seemed to make much of a difference.

I woke up and every morning my first line of thought as I walked the 4 steps from my bedroom to the kitchen was, “This house is too small. I hate how messy it always is because there’s nowhere to put anything.”

 If you wake up and your first thoughts are that of discontent, every day, for years, how do you think that’s going to affect the other areas of your life too? You might not even realize how it seeps into everything and before you know it it’s been 3 years of looking at your situation through the lens of “I hate this, this sucks,” and your situation still hasn’t changed.

One day I realized as I was watching my girls play that maybe our family is so close because we are literally close together all the time. I could either continue to wait to be happy until we moved into a bigger house (what I thought would fix everything), or find the thing in our situation that I don’t like and turn it into something I’m actually really grateful for.

This isn’t just finding the silver lining; burying and disregarding bad feelings isn’t always healthy.

Instead it’s about learning not to wish your life away and waiting to be happy. No external thing is what brings lasting happiness (less stress, yes! But only temporarily). But the skill of turning a situation on its head into something you can find the joy and blessing in… that’s invaluable.

It’s up to you only! Which do you prefer: waiting for the next stage or choosing to embrace the situation now?

Questions to prompt your journaling or thoughts today:

-What is your current situation that you’re waiting for to be over and onto the next stage of life?

-What specifically about this situation frustrates you the most?

-What would the opposite of that frustration be? What about your life are you enjoying that has been brought from the situation?