My definition of success has changed dramatically over the past 2 decades. What I thought I believed was success, has proven to be nothing more than a shallow existence. I have learned that I really am a simple person. The older I get the more I realize how very little I need to make me happy. I am low maintenance for the most part. My husband may not agree with this, but we all know that’s just because he is a boy! I can be showered, dressed and ready to spend a night out on the town in under 30 minutes. (true story) A pair of jeans, a cute t-shirt and flip flops are my version of comfortable. One of my most favorite things to do when I visit my best friend, is to simply be in the same room with her. We don’t even have to be talking. Just being together is enough. My home is very understated. There are a few family photos in frames, the occasional knick knack that has sentimental meaning to me, (like the hand made pottery my best friend from high school made me) but otherwise, my house is just that, a house. We have moved so often over the years with the military, that home for me, simply has become the people inside the structure and not the structure itself.
In my twenties, I tried so hard to maintain the appearance of a perfect home. Having the perfect marriage. Being the perfect parent. Living the perfect Christian life. I would say I had been trying to keep up with the Jones’, but I AM the Jones’!!! I felt like I was treading water, barely keeping my head above drowning, just to keep up with what I thought was expected of me. I tried so hard, that I forgot who I was. I forgot what I liked. I become what I thought everyone wanted me to be. For the most part, I was miserable. Although you would never have known that, because I always kept a smile on my face, just as was expected of me.
In my thirties, my view started changing. I starting seeing everyone else was in the same position I was in. They weren’t perfect. They were struggling just as much as I was struggling. I slowly began to walk away from the lifestyle I had created for myself. Going through the motions of what was expected of me. I started on my own journey. A journey that there was no road map for. It wouldn’t look like anyone else’s, and nor should it, because it would be as unique as I am. I actually started questioning all the things I had been told were true and sought the truth for myself. I stopped jumping through those hoops of expectation….I started thinking and believing for myself. I also started spending time with people I would never had spent time with before. People who before then, I would have simply judged, instead of loved.
Next April, I will say goodbye to my thirties, and embark on the next decade of my life. I am, for the first time in my life, learning to live authentically. I love the person I am discovering inside, the real me. I am finally finding my own voice. I am thinking for myself. I am walking my own path. I am making mistakes and LOVING it! Why? Because I discovered grace…and as I enter my forties, I will continue to walk daily, deeper in that grace.
Success for me now is simple. It is getting up when the alarm goes off instead of me hitting snooze 4 times. It is taking the kids to the movies when I said I was going to. It is baking those cookies I promised. It is taking a friend out to lunch who just needs someone to listen. It is saying how I really feel about something without the fear of what others may think. At it’s very simplest, success is feeling full after eating a meal with chopsticks….
