Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Treasuring the Present: Becoming a Family and Opportunities to Learn

Today, I'd like to try to treasure something that I am really struggling to treasure...  in fact, I'm not treasuring it at all. 


Most days, I'm really frustrated with it, it exhausts me, sometimes it discourages me and I continually pray for strength to get through it -- not really a "treasuring" attitude.  Today, I want to focus on treasuring this process of becoming a family and opportunities to learn.

I like opportunities to learn.  I have always enjoyed school, I like reading new research articles on my career specialty, I love attending conferences, I like learning new things -- I even really enjoyed all I learned in my Turkey Hunting Women's conference about hunting and turkeys this past weekend.  My problem is, I do not always recognize the unofficial chances to learn around me every day.  These opportunities to learn are not found in a classroom, but in my interactions with my husband and animals.  Opportunities to learn about them as we continue becoming a family.

Every day, I have more chances to learn about my husband.  I have opportunities to learn how to be a better wife to him.  I have the chance to learn more about our animals and how to love them and teach them better.  I have the chance to learn more about myself as a wife and how to respond more lovingly when my husband or animals act in an unexpected way.

Every day, Chris and I grow closer as husband and wife.  Every day, we have been married is one day longer we've been a family (which, when you've been married less than ten months -- ten months tomorrow -- every day counts).  Every day, we become closer as a family with our animals and each other.  Every day is an opportunity to learn and to love.

I do not treasure every day with our puppy or our kitty.  When I take Lloyd to the pond to swim by myself, I come home frustrated and exhausted with this full grown dog who is still such a puppy.  When our kitty notices the weather getting warmer and the sun shining, I get frustrated that she tries to run outside five times a day, and often succeeds when I have my hands full or when our dog door is open.  These adventures with the animals often leave me frustrated and overwhelmed at the idea of our eventually having a family with human children in addition to our animal children.  In times like these, I have to take a deep breath, and snuggle each of my animals and pray that God will help me treasure these opportunities to learn and these adventures through which we become more of a family.

Some days, it feels like everything goes wrong and I rarely respond lovingly when things go wrong -- but we go through it as a family, and we get a chance to wake up and try again tomorrow, as a family.

Even after (almost) ten months of marriage, I am still not used to being social in the morning.  Despite my love for my hubby and our dog, I can have a grumpy streak in the morning.  To be honest, I never knew I had a grumpy streak in the morning because I never had interactions with anyone in the morning -- a little tip for those of you who are unmarried -- you might be grumpy in the mornings and not know it yet!

Every day is an opportunity for me to let my love for my husband and my puppy overcome my natural morning grumpiness.  Every day is a chance to learn more about each other as a family, and I want to treasure this process -- this process that will take place for the rest of our lives.

Here's to trying to make treasuring the process of becoming a family the new normal.  It won't always be perfect, it won't always be what I'm expecting -- but I can treasure the opportunities to learn.

What challenging things in your life are you treasuring today?

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1 comment:

  1. We've been married for 9,5 months now and I LOVE being a family. But you are right, it gets pretty hard sometimes, we need to continually grow and learn :)
    Great post!

    ReplyDelete

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