The impossible 'more'...

I was going through my old journal today, thinking back to a world before kids and husband, to a place where I was 'free' to do as I would. To a world where I could pack a bag, catch a train and see new worlds that I had only dreamed of as a child. Prague, Venice, London, Paris, Nice, Rome, Berlin, the beaches of Spain... it was the stuff that dreams were made of. A world where anything was possible and life was full of people to meet, worlds to discover and hopes to accomplish. You know what I read in those pages? I read about a girl who didn't know what she had, a girl who had yet to discover the woman she could be. I read about hurts, disappointments and heart aches.

We tend to look back at things in life and see the good, see the blessings and the joys and casually leave out the parts that didn't make sense, or the parts that left us aching for more. I don't see in those pages the wonder of the world I was living in, but rather the dreams that I am now living. I see in those pages a girl who didn't know what she had, a girl who missed out on so much because I was too focused on the world I didn't have, or didn't feel I had.

It makes me question the way I view life now... do I realize how much I have in my life? Do I sit here in my cozy home, with my children sleeping soundly in their beds, my husband sitting on the couch and miss the wonder of this moment because I am wanting more? What more could there right? Yet that is always what we seem to be searching for... the impossible 'more'. More money, more affirmation, more love, more fame, more success, more, more, more and yet always still more.  When is what we have simply enough? When do we sit on the couch, look around us and smile and just say 'this is great' and revel in the thankfulness that we feel at the 'more' that we already have? At what point do we look back at the journal of our lives and see not the wanting but the simple wonder of the content we feel?

Am I at risk of missing this, of missing these few moments of my boys childhoods because of a striving for more? May it not be so, may I not take for granted the husband who works so hard to provide a safe and wonderful home for us, the man who loves me without hesitation no matter my mood, or my mistakes. The children who wrap their arms around me with giggles and smiles of love. May I never take one single moment of this 'now' for granted...