Gratitude Journal - Day 6: Growing Pains

Day 6: I’m grateful for the growing pains I’ve had in my life. The difficult experiences in our life give us lessons we couldn’t have learned any other way. This is a real life post here, so buckle up. 

I consider myself happy. I feel grateful for my life and my heart is full. I am blessed to just be alive. Yet  on occasion it’s easier to think about the things I don’t have or didn’t do. I have felt especially reflective over this last year of my life. I will try to put it into words. Maybe it’s my type A personality, but now and again, I look back at my life and start picking it apart, wanting to tweak and change things. I remember being eleven and being horribly bullied at school and feeling desperate and sad. I’ve wished so many times to go rescue her and to tell her to stick up for herself. I look back and wish I would have chosen to date more in high school and early college instead or having such long serious relationships. I also have wished I would have tried more sports, stuck longer with soccer, joined more high school clubs, & had secretly wished I would have joined the drama club, ran for student council, and more. I have wished to go back in time and keep myself from making some mistakes and save myself a lot of sorrow. There are times I wish I wouldn’t have done the “sensible thing” for my particular career choice which I thought was to do community college for my first two years to earn and save money. I had wished to have done college away from home to have that “classic” college experience. I longed to have had more roommates and more fun activities. I’ve kicked myself for not studying abroad in college when I had the chance. I always wanted to do a humanitarian aid trip for dental hygiene prior to having kids. I wished I would have danced more, learned to play the piano, spent more time with girlfriends, and had more confidence in my abilities. I wish I would have had better boundaries. Now and then I’ve even wished I could have a do over of Truman and mine’s first 8 or so years of marriage —I would have gotten myself some therapy and learned to communicate better which would have saved a lot of heart ache. 

It’s so easy to look at life in hindsight with that bird’s eye perspective and see what I “should” have done or wish I could have changed. This is where the white space of reflection comes into play —Being bullied as a child has given me incredible empathy and a desire to treat others with kindness and taught me how to be a better friend. Staying locally for my first two years of college allowed me to really bond with my younger sister Shelly who is 6 years younger than me. We didn’t get along growing up and we really forged a special bond in those two years. It also allowed me to save money for dental hygiene school and pay off my school debt in a year a half. Staying locally ultimately allowed me to meet and marry Truman! Getting married young allowed me to grow up with Truman and grow together. Marrying him helped me see myself through new eyes & I’m grateful for the rock he was for me. Not participating in as many things as a youth has given me a great desire to create and be more bold. It has given me the desire to look for and create opportunities as an adult to enrich my life and people’s lives around me. It also had made me especially attuned to looking for the strengths and interests of my own children. Not having had good boundaries growing up has made me more sensitive and a better advocate for others. Making my mistakes has given me a greater understanding when I see people make those mistakes. It also helped me to discover early on my Savior’s awareness of me and His love for me. From a young age, I was better able to understand how we can only be perfected through Him. I could go on and on, but all these experiences in my life —the wonderful things but especially the sorrow, challenges, trials, mistakes, timing, and missed or not taken opportunities all contribute to the person I am today. So would I go back and change it? If one thing changed, it could have changed the entire trajectory of my life. Even though I did not want and still don’t want difficult experiences in my life, I am also grateful for those growing pains. I can choose to have gratitude and a forward looking mentality that helps me see that it’s the sum of our experiences that make us who we are. When we can learn and grow from the good and the bad, I think God smiles with who we are shaping up to be and for that I’m grateful. #GiveThanks