Tag Archives: optimism

Perspective

Just Life, Other, , , , ,

Lately I’ve been feeling a little stressed and busy. It’s been a fun, action-packed month of July with vacations and an awesome work conference. I’ve gotten to spend time with family and friends and it’s been great. But coming out of it all, I feel like I have so much to do: normal laundry and cleaning, getting the house back in order, collecting baby gear, getting things ready for the latest addition to our family, wrapping up projects at work, other to-do items. For a few days, I was really overwhelmed. (And it doesn’t make it easier to accomplish my to-do list when I’m so tired coming home from work that I just want to lay down and do nothing.)

This evening our house was hot, and BYU has faster Internet that we do, so Josh and I brought our computers and some things to work on and headed up to campus. I was tired and whiny, but after a frosty and fries (yum yum) and once we got settled in a study room, I started tackling my to-do list.

After a little bit, I looked around and realized that I was on BYU campus in a study room, somewhere I hadn’t been in a while, and it reminded me of being a student. Those days of papers and tests and studying and deadlines. Then I took a second look at what I was doing: writing thank-you cards for generous baby shower gifts from family and friends. Sitting next to my best friend in the world. Getting ready to be a mom. Wow, how easy, fun, and carefree compared to studying for finals!

I really enjoyed being a student and going to college, but I think if my college self could look ahead to me right now, I’d be jealous and excited. Me with an awesome job I love and free evenings. With no homework. And with an amazing miraculous blessing about to enter my life, just around the corner.

So remembering my past tonight helped me enjoy the now just a little bit more. It’s so easy for me to get caught up in dreaming about and waiting for the future. Sometimes I think I forget that this current now I’m in is the future I once looked forward to more than anything. I think I need to stop and enjoy the now more often.

Look Up! A Photo Adventure

Just Life, ,

We went on a real fun date this week; it was Josh’s idea. He said he was walking around campus and started looking up and noticed how many amazing things there are to see if you just look up. So we grabbed our cameras and headed to campus to look up and take some pictures. It was fun; you really do notice so many more things if you just look up. There were all sorts of ceilings and trees and things I had never noticed, and I went to BYU for four years! (But now I’m not, of course, because I’m graduated.) ;-)

Anyway, we hope you enjoy our pictures! Don’t forget to look up every once in a while!

The Silver Lining

Just Life, Other, ,

I believe the difference between a good day and a bad day, between an awesome experience and an awful one, can all be in the way you look at it. Take our kitchen cabinets, for example. The house we’re renting (as we’ve discussed) is old, less-than-perfect, and quirky. When we first moved in and saw the kitchen cabinets, I thought, “Wow, they’re all white and made of metal. Taa-cky.” But then, one happy day, I was looking at our refrigerator, which is crowded with magnets and wedding announcements and cards from family, and then I looked at our cabinets…back at the refrigerator…back at the cabinets… “Hey!” I thought. “Those have potential!” And now (after a Christmas present from my sister of lots and lots of new magnets), I’ve turned our kitchen cabinets into more displays of cards, photographs, letters, and family love. Awesome!

So it’s all in the way you look at it, really. About finding the silver lining. Joshua and I were talking tonight, and we want to try to do that more often. Even when our lives are in flux, and we don’t know what changes with internships and jobs and such the next few months will bring, and life is scary and uncertain, we’ve decided we want to be better about looking for the silver lining.