Friday, January 7, 2011

Resolved: To Be Happy With My Limitations


I cannot be everything to everybody all the time. I just cannot. There is no possible way that every single person in my life can have "all of me".

And I am okay with that.

If I'm not one of the "popular mommies" who gets asked to coffee every other day, that's fine.

If I'm not receiving awards for doing the very most community service work in my town, that's okay.

If I'm not available to attend every function that family or friends invite us to, that'll have to do.

If I don't post every day or I don't update my blog enough or I never join Facebook (which, I hope you realize, is a very real possibility), that's not an issue to me.

There are things I just can't do... like grow three inches or buy a winter home in Curacao. Those limitations are simple to deal with. When there is seemingly no possible way you could do something, it's not that tough to shrug it off.

But when you feel like maybe you could... or you hear a nagging voice say that you should...

Well, that's when it's tougher.

Because, really, I could socialize more with the other mommies. I could spend more time volunteering and donating. I could spend hours and hours on my blog and make the effort to learn how to do more and better things with it.

But, while there are limitations that life and circumstance place upon us, there are also those limitations that we choose to place on ourselves. And I think those are probably more significant.

I choose to limit the time and energy I devote to those above things so that I can spend more time on the things that matter most to me. It is more important to me that my husband feel that he couldn't be any more loved by his wife than it is for me to feel loved by peers I don't necessarily even like. It is more important to me that my children get to witness me giving of my time and resources than it is for me to squeeze in oodles of volunteering without them. It is more important to me that you all know that, while I value you all enough to work hard to write honestly and from the heart for you, I simply am not in a season where I feel I can devote the time to make this blog all polished up and impressive. Part of me is very sorry for that. But that is one of those hard choices I make... you have to make lots of them too, I'm sure.

Being happy with my limitations means being content with where my priorities lie. When I start feeling like I'm limiting the time and love I can devote to my faith and family, THAT'S when my limitations become a problem.

Not being the most popular girl on the block?

That's a limitation I can be happy about.

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