When life has you in a hard spot I always find myself looking back on all my life and wondering what could have been if I had made different choices. I notice things that I should have done in order to have been better off (maybe)
It's an easy thing to do...that's why they say hind sight is 20/20
Well this past year for my family and I has been one of those hard years, in which both my husband and I spend a lot of time looking back on all the life choices we've made and wondering what could have been if we went a different path and what different things we should have done in order to not be in the hard spot we were in.
At the end of summer 2012 I found myself pregnant...after having just lost one house because we weren't making enough money to pay rent. We found a place to live so we weren't homeless but the pregnancy came at a bad time, we had just moved into our new place and were only barely making bills with both my husband and I working...I had morning sickness so had to quit... Really it's not the best to work in a kitchen and be running to the bathroom to throw up often. We were very excited about having the baby but scared shitless pretty much too. The winter proved to be a hard one... with only my husband's income, no raise and somehow less money than the years before we didn't have enough to cover all our bills and none for food. My family helped us with food often buying us groceries and having us over for dinner. We were very grateful. We kept wondering what we were going to do. We couldn't keep going on like this not with a baby coming and the expenses of diapers and everything.
As you can imagine we looked back at everything we had gone through in our last 6 years together...
We went over every mistake we made that led us to being so poor...
My semester at college...then my photography schooling. Thanks for that! I racked up a lot of debt...but it's hard to regret that. I wanted to be a Spanish Teacher and then I learned a lot about photography and I still don't think I have enough schooling and would love to go back.
That leads me to wonder where life would have gone had I stayed in college the first time...
What if we had waited the 4 years to get married? How stupid was it of us to have bought that brand new truck that we couldn't make the outrageous payments on right after our wedding?? Was it good or bad that we moved north as soon as work slowed down in the south? And we know that moving back to NC while we thought we had everything planned out so well and things were looking up for us, was a mistake.
I could keep going...but why waste our time.
I believe there's good that came from all of our choices even if looking back we see how things might have gone better had we made other choices
Buying that truck that really put us in debt and trashed our credit even more than my schooling...that taught us a lesson...NEVER BUY WHAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD!! Since then we've stuck to used cars for a good price that we've had to pay for in cash.
If we waited until I was 21 to get married, who knows what that would have or wouldn't have changed? It doesn't really matter. I'll have been married to my wonderful husband 6years this year, and we've had our share of ups and downs...but we've done it all together and I wouldn't want it any other way.
After all that felling sorry for ourselves, looking back on the could have beens (I could have been a teacher already) and should have dones, we realized that everything we went through we had done for a reason...each thing taught us a lesson, and instead of looking back and looking at where we were stuck we had to start looking ahead and thinking of a way to get to where we wanted to be.
Where we wanted to be was easy...we wanted a good life for our girls and to be able to make our bills and have more than enough food on the table and to enjoy life. Sound easy enough.
How to get there is another story but we all do what we need to in order to reach our goals and keep working hard on getting there and most IMPORTANTLY:
Never give up on your dreams!!!
(Image is taken from Instagram follow Factsofhealth for more)
I know it's hard. I've beaten myself up a lot over the years due to looking back on my past and seeing the mistakes I've made...I've gotten discouraged trying to figure out how to get to the places I want to be while looking at where I am.
I've often wondered about way back in my past, what would have happened if I grew up with my mom? What would have happened if I admitted and told someone what my grandfather was doing so much earlier?
But none of that really matters right now...it's important that instead of looking back on your mistakes and dwelling too much in your past pain that we look for the good times and remember them and, look forward to tomorrow and make plans on how to have a better tomorrow while never forgetting to make the best of right now!
Yes, I said all that after telling you how much time I have wasted looking back but I know it's important to stop doing that.
I'll leave you (and me) with this...
