Life is more than THAT MOMENT

We dream of it so long. Plan it out. Play it over in our minds. What the “after” is going to look like. What it feels like when we have “made it” and are finally successful. I guess in all those years of dreaming and planning and imagining THAT MOMENT that I never thought about what the next day would look like. But What happens after that?

As a little girl I dreamt of my wedding day. I loved the jewelry and the ballgowns and spent so long dreaming of THAT MOMENT when I’d walk down the aisle. I watched every.single.episode of TLC’s A Wedding Story. When life happend different than I had planned I realized that the moment I dreamed of was so insignificant. It wasn’t about that moment, it was about every moment after that. We eloped and never had a wedding but have had a better marriage than I could have ever dreamt of. I should have seen how this lesson would play out in the rest of my life, but I didn’t. I still kept searching for, planning, and dreaming about “THAT MOMENT” in other areas of my life…

THAT MOMENT when your child is born.

It is truly magical and absolutely life changing… but it isn’t just that moment that changes your life. It is every moment after that. In the spectacular moments like when she says “Mama” or takes her first steps… or those frustrating moments when you get in your first fight over what she wears and you realize that she is her own person… or when you realize you can’t protect her from pain the way you wish you could. It isn’t just one moment… it is every one of those moments strung together in a lifetime of memories that is truly special and absolutely life changing.

When I was overweight the thing that kept me pressing on through every workout or sticking to my meal plan was the dream of THAT MOMENT when I would look in the mirror and see Skinny Courtney staring back at me. When I would fit into a size 10…. or weigh a certain weight. When I would feel “done” with my weight loss journey. I dreamt about that before and after side by side. I never thought about the day after that. In some twisted dream world I am sure I thought it would look like it did before, eating whatever I wanted without caring. But it doesn’t. I thought I would never think about parts of my body I didn’t like. But I still have days where I struggle with parts of my body.

As an owner of several different businesses I dreamt about THAT MOMENT when I would feel like we made it. Many people already feel like we are successful, and I feel like we have done well for ourselves for sure… but I struggle with feeling like we are the success others believe us to be because it doesn’t look like I thought it would. I figured we would struggle through our 20’s and then somehow turn 30 and BAM… we would have arrived. We would be living large with fat bank accounts and have “people” to do the busy work for us or something outrageous like that. I thought that somehow making it would mean it would be easy… but it’s not. It’s still early mornings, late nights, and doing a lot of stuff on our own… like business taxes, business license, budgeting and fees…. It’s still a lot of work.

For so long I lived for those moments, temporarily suspending life waiting to enjoy it until I reached that moment I was working towards. Once I was married…. had a kid… lost the weight… had a successful business… than I would enjoy life. This cycle will continue to consume me unless I stop it. There will always be some goal to chase, some moment I dream about. Yes, it is good to have goals to work towards… but as soon but I don’t want to look back on the life I missed out on because I was focused on chasing that one single moment in time when everything was perfect. Just because you aren’t where you want to be doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy where you are.

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So live in the now. Enjoy the life you’ve already built. Chase your dreams, but not at the expense of missing out on the many moments that happen before they come true.

How can you enjoy the life you already have?