Happiness

Hey guys, hope all is well! Everything on my end is going pretty dang awesome. :) I honestly have had the best month and a half of my life! Mitch and I have really got our routine down, and are just really enjoying marriage and the phase of life we are in. As cheesy as it sounds marriage really is 10x better than you ever imagine it will be. Also, I am 22 weeks!

As happy as I've been the last few weeks, though, I do still have the tiny tiniest of stress clouds hanging over my shoulder all the time just encouraging me to freak out about finances when the baby comes because we both decided that when Baby comes I will leave my job and focus on motherhood full time. Which, I do have to say I am so, so grateful that Mitch is on the same page as me with this and 100% supports my desire to be a stay-at-home mom. Even, though, I'm super excited to give my baby my full attention and time, that little stress cloud I mentioned earlier, just drives me to waste time imagining how nice life will be when we have x things or when Mitch is done with school and makes x amount of money, or how easy things will be when x things happen. 

If any of you follow me on Instagram, though, you'll know I recently started reading "Be Happy" by Hank Smith (one of my former seminary teachers, holla). Anyway, so far, and I'm not very far, I've learned that only 10 percent of our happiness comes from our circumstances. Only TEN! I don't know if that's blowing your minds as much as it blew mine, but I was super surprised. I feel like it's almost human tendency to think that our circumstances and what happens to us impacts more like 90 percent of our happiness.

Anyway, I wish I could share the whole book with you guys but since I can't I'll share this quote with you, "People who believe all their happiness depends on circumstances fall into a dangerous trap. They think that happiness will be in the next place, with the next job, with the next partner, and so on. You'll chase it your entire life and never catch it because it wasn't ever there in the first place. And until you give up on the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are." WOWZA, am I right?

That paragraph from the book really got me thinking about how that sounds a lot like the family goal Mitch and I set for ourselves to enjoy the phase of life we are in instead of wasting time wishing for the next one. And it gave me a big old wake up call to focus on the present and finding happiness in my life as it is and will be in the next few months!

So to conclude I guess I just want to encourage all of us to really focus on the present, finding our happiness, and not letting our circumstances determine our level of joy! Oh and just as a side-note, I can feel Baby moving now and it's gotten me so, so excited!

Much love! 

Finding Joy in Pregnancy

Hello, hello! I've been intending to write more frequently now that I'm prego, I want to be able to keep better track of this pregnancy so baby has something to look back on. Here goes then. I feel like this pregnancy has been a whirlwind of emotion for me. If I'm being honest, the first trimester, I didn't have any of the warm fuzzies and excitement that most women seem to have and I felt like something must be wrong with me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I loved my baby, but I was just having a hard time feeling connected with the fact that I was pregnant. If I'm being totally and completely honest, though, I know it was just because I was being resiliently selfish, having a hard time letting go of selfish thinking, and being overly concerned with the changes my body was and would be going through. What finally changed things, though, were a couple of things. 

One, when I finally felt the baby move for the first time last week! It was so crazy and I'm telling you, that moment, was my, "This is real, this is my baby, and I love him/her so, so much" moment. It wasn't even a big movement or anything, just a tiny little rolling sensation, but it was amazing! The second thing that really turned things around for me was thinking about what a blessing it was to even have the opportunity to be pregnant and have gotten this far in my pregnancy. Just thinking about how it isn't as easy for every woman to reach motherhood, and there I was completely taking it for granted, really humbled me. 

Pregnancy is beautiful and it really is a time to be in awe of what our bodies are capable of and feel gratitude that we have that opportunity! Maybe that's a little cliche and cheesy but it really is so true. And reminding myself of that daily helps me to get over my fear of one, pushing a baby out of my body, and two my concerns over how soft and big my body is getting/will get. Just trying to focus on the miracle of it all day by day so I don't get too scared, haha. So yeah, Baby, if you ever read this, I want you to know that I love you SO much and it just took your mama a little second to get over herself, haha!