Wednesday Wisdom: Let’s Be Real
By Katie
Being human means we’ll never be perfect. Sometimes in the midst of the flawless Instagram feeds, perfectly posed Facebook photos, and the desire to present ourselves at our best we can forget that. Life isn’t meant to be perfect until we find ourselves in the full presence of God Himself. This week Alec and I have been reminiscing a lot over some funny yet painful moments in our marriage where things just got real. One in particular has stuck with me and I want to share it with you today.
When Alec and I began our wedding planning we knew it wasn’t going to be a fairy tale experience, but we were newly engaged and sometimes you loose sight of that. One of the most fun parts of planning a wedding, or so all the cheesy romantic movies had shown me, was registering. Sounds awesome, right? You, your honey, and a scanner walking around picking out items for you new life together that other people will lovingly gift you with. Sign me up!
I was thrilled and decided for us to start at my favorite store, Target. We picked up our magic scanner… Now cue the movie montage where we’d have the time of our lives planning for our future home, laughing in joyful anticipation, and falling more in love. My expectations of this event were high, to say the least.
We got started and I hadn’t really told Alec why we were at Target and that I was so excited about registering. To him we were at Target to shop, then we would leave promptly after purchasing our goods. Here was my first mistake, I didn’t communicate at all my expectations and Alec was clueless when I started asking his opinion on every detail from plate design to pillows.
Mistake number two was going while they were selling Halloween costumes and toys. Alec quickly got bored and to save you all the stressful details we ended up in a fight in the middle of the storage section as Alec attempted to be a ninja with the scanner (while wearing a fireman’s hat and yelling “pew… pewww…”) and I was left crying wearing a witch’s hat that he had put on me, heartbroken over how he was acting.
My third mistake was allowing Alec to add whatever he wanted to the registry. He thought that it would be absolutely hilarious if he added the video game “Roller Coaster Tycoon”. I left it because surely no one would actually buy that. Well they did!
I can now look back on us two years ago and say that we’ve thankfully grown a lot since then. If I’m upfront with you though we still have a lot of less-than-perfect moments. We argue, we cry, we get discouraged, we doubt ourselves, but it’s okay. We’re human and it’s never going to be perfect. It’s the moments where we find ourselves cuddled up on the couch after a hard day working that we find ourselves gushing with thankfulness for this crazy amazing life God’s given us. We find joy in the imperfectly perfect moments, they make us who we are and they become life lessons that grow us.
Today I hope that you will always be able to look back at those moments and laugh. I pray that you’ll see that being messed up at times isn’t a battle you face alone. Some days you’ll need a good cry and a nap and that’s life. Sometimes you just need to let the moment happen. You’re brave and you’re beautiful no matter what those moments make you feel like though, and I hope you never forget that.
XOXO,
Katie
