If You Want to be Happy, Be.

This blog has nothing to do with "The Adventures of Waverley Kate," well, not with the book anyway. This blog is just a nod at "the sometimes funny life" that I used to live, and, if the urge strikes me, a place to jot down my thoughts.

Tonight, I’m thinking about how life truly is what you make of it. If you’d have told me at eighteen that I’d be married (for the second time), living in a ranch house an hour from anywhere we need to be (after selling our house in town), with our three kids (with 11 and 13-year age gaps), and my husband (whose past once made for scandalous stories), I’d have laughed out loud. Eighteen-year-old Julie had no plans of marriage or kids, drank cheap vodka like it was water, and wanted a pot leaf tattoo on her hip so badly she couldn’t stand it.

Now, I happily snuggle up with all of my babies on the couch in the evenings, drink coffee like it’s water, and cringe at the thought of that pot leaf tattoo. I’ve gone from one cliché to the next, and I’m perfectly fine with that.

At eighteen, the question I was being asked was, “What’s next?” Pick a major. Go to college. Find a job. That was the plan, but I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life—college, career, or otherwise. As far as careers go, I still don’t. I’ve been an ad director, a waitress, a teacher. I’ve baked cakes, decorated Christmas trees, designed webpages, and painted furniture. I'm a full-time marketing director, part-time videographer, and a hopefully-more-than-once-published children’s book author. From day to day, I don’t know what I want to be, even though I am, in fact, “grown up.” And unfortunately when you’re growing up, that’s all that’s talked about, but in reality, it’s not what’s important. The goal shouldn’t be “what do you want to be?” but should be “who do you want to be?” and “what kind of life do you want to live?”

I didn’t really grow up in a church. I visited in spurts over the years. I’ve always read my Bible and prayed, but I never had a true understanding for the word. If you want to get me started on my conspiracy theories, I totally fed into the feminist ideals regarding careers, marriage and kids, which I wholeheartedly believe has been propagandized to damage the traditional family. But over the years, I have come to grasp the importance and value of marriage, while simultaneously seeing our culture’s blatant disregard for it.

I know that you’ve all heard it, but how true is it that when all is said and done, and we're laying on our death beds - where we went to college, how much money we made, our career statuses - none of it matters. The relationships that we've built with our Heavenly Father and our family, the love that I shared, the life that I lived - that’s what matters. And how blessed I am that even with all of my flaws and bad decisions, God blessed me with this life—these people to love and care for. And while I consider myself a jack of all trades (master of none), I don’t believe God called me to “be” anything but a mama and a wife. And I'm perfectly happy with that.

And now, let me tie everything back together, because I feel like this is kind of everywhere... I could be disappointed with the way my life has turned out. I'm not anything special. There have been some failures, some huge disappointments, and some very humbling moments along my journey. I could mumble and grumble about "this" or "that' that didn't go my way. But life truly is what you make it - it's finding the good, it's taking the next step, it's getting out of bed even when you don't want to - one "adventure" after another - and it's counting your blessings every. single. day.