Finding Beauty in the Mess

I'm starting a new blog. I'm writing again for the first time in over a year. I'm not sure what is going to come out of me, and that's always freaking awesome place to start (this is when a "sarcasm font" would be handy). But, seeing as the purpose of this blog is VULNERABILITY, I can promise messiness. (The original title of this blog post was "Hello, I'm Scared of This Blog"). I'm going to write brave, and I'm going to write kind. 

My last blog was titled "Reservation for One" and chronicled the difficulty of deployment prep as a Navy Reservist couple. 5 days before my husband was supposed to leave for Afghanistan, his orders were cancelled. Our world was left in pieces. We had also been struggling with trying to have a baby, and the day before our orders were cancelled, we found out we were pregnant. Everything we knew to be true was shattered. My husband not deploying was not the blessing our friends and family believed it to be. Our finances and lives had been arranged around this deployment, as well as my husband's military career. He had to find a new job and a new means of dealing with the finances the deployment was supposed to take care of. The blessing was our daughter, Isabelle. I was incredibly grateful to not have to deal with a pregnancy without my husband, and I'm so glad he was there for her birth. She has been the light in our lives. 

This blog is titled "Our Messy Life" because MESSY is what life has been for my husband and I since we have been together (to be fair, our lives were hardly neat and tidy BEFORE that!). Starting this blog was prompted by a particularly shitty week where I had to hear and deal with a lot of things that I didn't want to. That has been pretty much the state of things since becoming a parent (or since getting married, or since becoming an adult, or since college...or since I was five..). Marriage, life, finances, family, parenting...it's all a giant, difficult, beautiful, exciting, scary, fun, messy mess. But, from what I can tell, we aren't the only ones with a messy life. Blogging forces me to DEAL WITH things, and EXPLORE the fun and not so fun parts of being an adult in this life. And maybe some of you are dealing with the same things too. I'm going to take a wild guess and say you are.

I'm also beginning a journey - letting go of perfection. I'm working my way through the book Hands Free Mama: A Guide to Putting Down the Phone, Burning the To-Do Lists, and Letting Go of Perfection. This book is supposed to take 1 year to complete with weekly challenges. Sounds like fun, huh? Really, I NEED to learn to be PRESENT AND CONNECTED. For me, this not only means letting go of lists, perfection and technology, but also obsessive and self-centered thinking. Oh, and control. In case you didn't know this, "control freaks" (as I have been called more than once) are terrified of anything that may lead them to LOSE CONTROL. Why on earth would anyone WANT that??? Being connected and present, and letting go of control, can lead to amazing and wonderful discoveries. Life is happening in the mess. There are moments that I have missed, and moments I don't want to miss. I'm hoping to let go of what I don't need in order to find what I do need. 

So welcome - I'm going to share my life as a mom, a wife, and my journey away from perfection and into connectedness. I'm going to share our parenting choices, experiences, daily life, and maybe even some delicious brownie recipes (but since I suck at baking, you might want to skip those posts). Who knows. I can promise, it will be full of MESS and HONESTY and BEAUTY and HOPE.