It's Okay - Allowing Yourself a Fair Perspective

Where I am in life is wonderful. I have amazing friends and family, an amazing husband, a job as a TA at BYU that I love, and I am taking a full schedule of classes that I enjoy. My major and future plans excite me. I am not financially stressed and I feel loved and safe. I have an adorable little apartment that is perfect for us that Andrew and I have both have enjoyed settling into and making into our home. I don't feel overwhelmed by duties at home, my husband and I work hard on our school work (generally, there can be that one paper we really don't want to do), have a happy marriage, and we enjoy games and Netflix and church and friends and good food and time for ourselves.

But sometimes I don't feel like life is wonderful. I want so much to do so well in my endeavors and in being the person I want to be that sometimes I worry and stress more than I need to. 

Life is full of a lot to do and has new situations we didn't expect. It is good to have a fair amount of stress in life, because we aren't meant to be static, and growing and progressing means doing hard things. But as we face new situations every day, at least I can feel the weight of the worry that I'm not handling my responsibilities and facing the new situations as best as maybe I could or that I should be a better student, or a better family member, or a better wife, or a better friend. To be completely honest, I'm usually happy and content throughout the day of responsibilities but sometimes when I get home and there still seems to be so much to do and I still feel stress it can change from good stress to bad stress and cause me to become more worried about things I wasn't worried about before. I wanted to write this for those who, like me, though their life may be full of blessings and good efforts and good work and a great deal of wonderful imperfections, somehow, sometimes, still seem to worry now and then if what they are doing or who they are is good enough. Sometimes we're just not fair to ourselves and bring upon ourselves added stress that we don't deserve or need. As a new wife, this is hard for both me and my husband as I can become more irritable and frustrated about things in our marriage that wouldn't frustrate me otherwise.

Somewhere inside in both day to day life when we feel stressed as well as in bigger tragedies and disappointments we know "it's okay" but we don't really believe it. So I wanted to point a couple things out that I know I have to remind myself sometimes:

• It's okay to have a hard time.
• It's okay that your life is imperfect. 
• It's okay if now your life consists of something you didn't want it to. Things we don't want will always come. Things we do want and don't expect come too, and that's pretty cool.
• It's okay to not really be good at something and instead just be fabulously mediocre. My dad once said with a laugh that you have to let yourself just be mediocre at some things.
• If you're doing something you are mediocre at or even usually good at and you feel like you look stupid, that's okay too. My grandma told me it's important to look stupid sometimes.
• It's okay to do a good-enough job and not your very best sometimes when it is better for your life (but do try hard when you can). It's okay to pull back when you need to.
• It's okay to give up on somethings. I always thought it would be so cool to do a back flip and never quite got there. You can always learn something new (with certain physical limitations) and I still think a backflip would be cool, but I don't think it's important to my eternal well-being or even that important to my happiness on earth or worth the time right now.
• It's okay to know it will be okay but not be there yet. You don't have to climb a mountain, or change a habit or whatever it might be, in a day even if you'd like to.
• It's okay to seem to find something someone does that bugs you, work that you never want to do, and little clumsy moments or let downs pretty much every day. Talking to a friend (or spouse, they're good at this) about those things and letting a laugh carry them away is nice.
• It's okay to be happy. It's kinda cruel that sometimes when you are trying to be humble and kind to others you feel guilty in success. It's okay to celebrate successes and be proud of yourself. Be generous with others, but let blessings be blessings and let yourself be happy about it or share that success with a friend. It's good for the soul.
• It's okay to focus effort on yourself to find happiness, as long as it's the right kind of real happiness.
• It's okay for other people not to understand you completely. You'll always be more AND less than the next person in a lot of ways, and you'll always seem perfect to someone and the furthest thing from perfect to someone else. That's okay too.
• Earth shattering things happen, and they are called earth shattering for a reason. There is sickness and disability and failure and huge disappointments for yourself and others and broken hearts and death, and it's not okay. That's okay too. Love yourself and give yourself the time you need for it to be okay.
• It's okay to change and move on and find new stages and parts of life, and have to leave behind the old way of life even though you sure loved it that way and it can cause some separation anxiety for a while. People grow up, people change, people move, jobs come or go, and life changes. It's okay for it to be hard, but work toward accepting the change and finding happiness in it. I usually find I'm not really missing out on something like I thought I would be.
• It's okay to fail sometimes. It really stinks, but sometimes you just can't do it yet and it's okay. It's okay to not completely finish an assignment sometimes or get a little lower grade than you wanted when the stress it puts on you to finish those things or get that grade is something you can't handle happily in your life.
• It's okay to take breaks. Allowing yourself breaks when you need them has proven to make people more efficient and effective when they get back to work (or whatever you were doing). You don't always have to feel guilty for giving yourself time. Sometimes social media and Netflix help keep me sane, and that's a good thing.
• It's okay to seem behind. Somethings are going to be harder for you than other people. We're all different. People aren't as bothered to help you as we usually think. Everyone is struggling with something at any one time - it's okay to admit you would benefit from help.
• It's okay to not have everything done. Let's be real - this is pretty much always in life. Don't keep peace and happiness for when the to-do list is done, because it might become pretty rare (:
• It's okay to be quirky. I like to walk in the rain and drink pickle juice and not wear shoes. And those things are goofy and don't really seem to have a point to some, but they make me happy so I'm going to keep right on doing them.
• It's okay to think differently. 
• It's okay to not get what you really wanted, whether or not your opinion of what you really wanted changes afterwards and you're grateful or you still look back and wish you could have gotten the job or made the shot or whatever it may be. Sometimes it just doesn't work out, but life doesn't run out of opportunities.
• It's okay to cry. You don't have to feel like you failed at being strong when you do.

Sometimes I find that not realizing it's okay is the only thing holding stress and worry inside me. I guess it's right that our worst enemies in life are often ourselves. We have to not take ourselves so seriously all the time and try to stay close to Christ and remember what he thinks of us. It can be easier to be gracious and accepting and forgiving and patient with others than with yourself. But give yourself a break. Stopping holding yourself back and just letting the stress and worry go often leads to happier and more productive days and better rest.

It's fairly easy for me to write this and say these things and easy to read them and agree with them, but the point isn't to agree necessarily. It's to tell the little voice in your head that is disappointed with work or with school or with a relationship or with yourself to shut up. We know life is funnier and more comfortable and more progressive in it's imperfect glory and we will be more kind to ourselves. We all have at least something we can think of that was pretty sucky to have come into our lives and we were so surprised when everything turned out okay. The worst case scenario often isn't that bad and isn't even going to happen anyway. So when you're at the end of the day tomorrow and there's still something else you feel you should have gotten done, or something happened that put you in a bad mood, or whatever that little thing is that happens tomorrow that doesn't seem okay, gosh darn it, be fair to yourself and let it be okay.

A Story of Us - Three Squeezes

When we began dating, I didn't know Andrew very well, but what I did know about him was comforting. He was responsible, intelligent, had his own sense of humor, appreciative, humble, and kind. I had heard from a friend in a discussion at church one day that in finding an eternal companion you're not supposed to find the right person, but find the kind of person you can build the right relationship with, and build that relationship. You could say I was taking a chance or following the spirit in agreeing to date the boy from Chemistry after 8 days (we had been acquaintances before and had gone on one official great date and unofficial dates nearly every day of the following week, so you can choose to call me crazy or not as you please), but I really saw this boy as being one with that potential - the kind of person I could build the right relationship with.

The days passed and we grew. Sometimes I would laugh at how different we were, and there was a time a little bit after we started dating that I really doubted and became afraid, but in telling Andrew these things, I felt comfortable. This time when I wasn't sure about us was the first of many times I was uncertain or frustrated about something. Andrew was there for me and expressed that he wanted to be with me but he wanted most for me to be happy. His patience and understanding and trust in me and my decisions felt good. Then, and ever since, I could never find a reason to not be with Andrew. I never felt that uncertain again, I have found that my uncertainties are best confronted by Andrew and I together, even if that just means sharing a worry and having his support in my confronting it.

I give this introduction to show that in my relationship with Andrew, I was confident and happy. A lot of this comes from the kind of person Andrew is. He's good through and through. But despite this deep underlying happiness that was there no matter what, which I think is common in good relationships and especially marriages, there were and are still little things that worry me or frustrate me now and then. As we were dating, I became frustrated about feeling loved. I knew I was loved, but didn't feel it sometimes, and though it sounded silly even to me at the time, I knew we needed to find a way for Andrew to better communicate his love to me that I felt and internalized for my personal peace and happiness. We talked about how I could feel more loved before Andrew would go back to his apartment, and though we were working on it and getting better, one night I seemed especially put out. We were sitting outside against a wall, and Andrew squeezed my hand three times. It's fun to think about what my face must have looked like, because I got it and looked up and said, "Does that mean 'I love you'?" He kinda laughed and said something like, "Yeah. You haven't noticed before? I've been squeezing your hand since we started dating."

My mind immediately flashed back to when I was gently prodding for Andrew to say he loved me when I knew I was falling for him. Even before he said he loved me, he knew it inside himself and was showing me even when I didn't notice. 

I am very happy with the love I feel communicated to me now, and Andrew and I can have entire small conversations through hand squeezes. But I learned something in that moment, and I still look back on it. There was an opportunity for growth and I had certain expectations for how I wanted something to be, while all the while my Andrew was happy, content, willing to approach an opportunity for growth with me, and showing his love to me the best he could even when I had no idea. I felt such overwhelming love to have someone like Andrew, who continues to love me like that because it's who he is.

Maybe I'm sharing this story for someone to remember a similar thing they learned once with a relationship they have, for my personal recollection and growth, or for my children to read one day and see just how much their daddy loved their mom, and was as kind and humble as he is from the very beginning, 

But if nothing else, maybe it's just a fun story of us. When I think about the couple that we have grown to be, and all of the perfect imperfections that means, somehow I still think back to the original three squeezes.