Happy

Happiness, in general, has been on my mind a lot lately.  People I love have gone and are going through experiences that have or will change their life.  My life has changed over the past few years and I can't say I've always handled it gracefully.

It is so easy to think life will become easier once you're past the phase you're in.  When I was single, I looked at married people and couldn't help but look forward to when I could feel more settled and be so in love with one person(go ahead, roll your eyes.).  Then I got married and life was good but I saw stay-at-home moms and thought how much fun it would be to stop with the busy life of various jobs and stay at home with a cute, precious baby.  We got pregnant and miscarried and I looked at pregnant women with envy.  We got pregnant again and morning sickness hit...hard...and for a long time. I looked at women with little babies and I couldn't wait until I wasn't pregnant.  Patrick came and all of the sudden my world turned upside down and I was exhausted and I looked at people without kids and I was envious that they could go to the grocery store by themselves.  And I was envious that when they were sick they could call in a sick day and recuperate...alone.  And for some reason, I got baby hungry really soon after we had Patrick and the whole process started over again.  Mixed with everything else going on in life, I found it really hard to just be happy.  

Disclaimer: My Savior, the gospel and my family are most important to me in this life.  Without the gospel to give me direction and my Savior and family to give me strength and support, I would be nothing.

With that said, I've found it's really important to find things that make us happy, despite what is going on in our life.  There is never going to be a perfect phase of life.  I think about how nice it will be when I'm not packing, what feels like, my whole house just to take two little kids to the grocery store but I already know I'm going to be sad when Patrick doesn't want me to sing to him at night.  

I don't talk a lot about fitness on this blog but I'm finding that a regular fitness routine is needed in my life for me to be happy.  Even though we went to bed at 11:45 last night, I still set my alarm for 5:50 this morning so that I could go get my triathlon training in.  The pool was calling me. ;)  From 6:00-7:30, that is my time to be by myself, doing something that makes me happy. I can set and achieve goals that give me confidence.  I've found that I love doing races and they give me motivation to get up on mornings when I would much rather stay in bed.  Lately I've been thinking about how I feel like I'm getting in the best shape of my life.  I'm running farther and faster than I ever have, I can finally swim and I actually look forward to lifting weights.  I still have a long way to go but I don't care.  I'm getting there...wherever "there" is.

However, every time I went to the gym, I felt a twinge of sadness because I've always been the music nerd and the more I work on one goal, the less time I have for a different goal.  I feel like it's easy to always be striving to be perfect at life but still feel like you're constantly failing.  I couldn't be totally happy at my new physical accomplishments because I was losing a skill that I'd spent years working on.  I thought I didn't have time to practice my violin but all of the sudden I've been asked to play  for various things in my ward and play for the Rexburg orchestra again and the Lord is helping me find time to play.  And I was less rusty than I thought. ;)  And I am again reminded how much music makes me happy.   

I don't know if this post makes sense and it probably isn't important to anyone other than myself, but my point is that it's easy to get depressed and bogged down with life.  It's easy to want what you don't have.

If only I had that person's life, then I could be happy...

But really, we make our own happiness.  There are people that help us find happiness but they can't do it all for us.  No marriage is perfect, no child is perfect, no person is born with a perfect body or the ability to touch any instrument and play it perfectly on their first try.

Patrick's kisses make me happy.  Aiden's smile makes me happy.  Jon's comforting words and hugs make me happy.  Feeling a peace at church makes me happy.  Seeing how much my kids love their grandparents makes me happy.  Knowing the Lord is involved in my life makes me happy. Find what makes you happy, serve others, and the Lord will help you find what you're looking.

These two little men make me pretty happy.