"I Wish I'd Known How Happy I Was!"

When I was a teenager my Dad would say, "Teri, don't wish your life away." I remember sitting in class at Coronado High School watching the clock go around and thinking, "I'm never going to get out of this school. "Here it is forty-two years after leaving that school and I'm still wishing my life away. Candi and her family left for the beach on Saturday. Spencer and Annie are going to Utah and Montana tomorrow. Mindi and her family are going to Dallas this weekend for Nationals, where Tristyn will play in a volleyball tournament. I don't know what Ethan and Jenn are doing yet but I know what we are doing. When Rich quit his job and went out on his own to start his company, he promised me, "I will be home more and make way more money." I think he has made a little more money but being married to a business is so hard. Candi doesn't understand why we can't just pack up and spend a few weeks away. Rich has so much work piled up and people waiting for him to get to their jobs, there is no way we can leave, ever. As I was reading my little book today the paragraph title said, "Don't Wish Life Away." She says, "Don't imagine that one day everything is going to be perfect. If you are waiting for that perfect day, that perfect life, that perfect marriage, you will have a long wait. This mortal life is a place for trials and tests, hope and sorrow, pain and peace. Don't wish your life away waiting. Enjoy the journey, appreciate the small day-to-day perks, and be grateful. If you don't, there will come that day when you will say in sorrow, "I wish I'd known how happy I was!" Looking back on my life at the things I felt were so hard then, now that I've had to endure some really hard trials, don't seem that bad. We never know how much more life we have, so being grateful for all the little things I have in my life is what I need to do, so I won't say, "I wish I'd known how happy I was!"