Life Lessons and Happiness

We have a family blog. It helps to keep friends and family current with the happenings in our world. This is not our family blog.

This is MY blog.
This is where this 32-year-old, 33-week pregnant current mother of two, who happens to be an eternal optimist, can collect and keep track of her thoughts.

My life is incredibly blessed in ways that I cannot count or measure.
On the other side of the coin, like so many others in this world, it has been laced with large doses of pain, challenges and darkness.

As we await the birth of our third child and we raise two others, one which has Down syndrome, I know that the blessings and challenges are going to multiply exponentially.

And that is a good thing.

As an eager student of life for 32 years now, I appreciate every lesson I learn. During each situation that I find myself in, I pause to ask myself, "What am I supposed to get out of this? What should I be learning here?"

Every day, each challenge and triumph, offers a lesson - or builds upon one I've already learned. I am very grateful for these lessons. Sometimes I am fortunate to have instant gratification and the lesson is immediately evident, but more often the lessons reveal themselves in time. As long as I open myself up to it, the lesson eventually becomes clear - and I become a better wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, coworker...human being.

I am a believer in the "everything happens for a reason" philosophy. I have witnessed God working in my life, and in the lives of those around me. As time goes by, most everything comes full circle and I can see the chain of events in my life lesson much like a "connect the dots" picture from childhood.

It's rarely easy, but the rewards from being grateful for and mastering life's lessons are priceless.
I believe it is the key to true happiness.