ready or not...

ready or not.

what a great way to describe our days.

ready or not, here comes the rest of your life.

ready or not, kids change everything.

ready or not, life goes on.

ready or not. ready or not.

ready

or

not.

time waits for no one.

it keeps marching on.

and i have learned that for most people - we're not ready. 

"ready as i'll ever be" is far more truthful than "i was born ready."

no one was born ready for anything. 

i remember being sixteen and learning to drive and thinking - i thought i'd feel older at 16. 

the same thing happened when i was 18 and left for college.

and then again at 21 when i got engaged and moved cities.

and then again at 22 when i got married. 

i thought a married, working adult would feel much older than i did at the ripe old age of 22.

and don't even get me started on how i felt as a brand-new mom. 

in my mind i saw all of these adults walking around who seemed like they knew what the heck they were doing. and then i got here - to adulthood, and most definitely when i got to motherhood - and realized that all of us are just groping around in the dark trying to find the best way forward. 

and once again, i come back to this: we need each other. how did i figure out how to be a mom? by watching and learning from other moms. by asking questions and seeking out the answers from people i trust. 

too often we're afraid to ask the questions we need to ask in order to understand what we haven't been able to grasp yet. 

i was. 

i wanted to be independent. i didn't want anyone talking down to me or treating me like i didn't know. i thought that once you got to be an adult, you should know. you should know all.the.things.

but there was plenty i didn't know. {and still. still plenty. i think maybe even more now than before.} and too often we don't ask because we want people to think we know more than we do. we think asking questions and admitting ignorance means admitting defeat. 

but how do we get better - how do we become ready for something unless we learn? unless we prepare? unless we're willing to live it and do it and grow?

we regularly joke around with our kids to "stop growing!" but just as growth is essential for kids to show that they are healthy, it's essential for the health of every single one of us. 

we all need to keep growing.

and guys, growth hurts.

growth means stepping outside of our comfort zones. it means sailing the ship instead of staying safe in the harbor. it means risk. it means trying new things, and as jon acuff says: being brave enough to be bad at something new.

in light of all of that i think it's crucial to remember that in doing these things - in attempting to grow - it will be hard. and you will not feel ready. because you're not ready. not yet.

when we get stronger and build muscles in our physical bodies, we work our muscles to exhaustion - to failure, and when they repair themselves from the work then they are stronger. they have to be driven to a point of weakness to get stronger.  

they have to be used. they have to be tried. 

we have to push our minds too. we have to push past our discomfort. we have to push past the idea that we need to be ready. the truth is, if we've never tried, we don't fully know what to expect so there's no way to be fully ready. sometimes you just have to GO anyway.

i think i've started to believe the lie that our goal in this life is simply to be comfortable. 

so i'm going to yell at you and i'm going to yell at me, ok? 

GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE!

being comfortable doesn't make us right. being in a place where we're unchallenged in our beliefs doesn't make us stronger, it makes us weaker. groupthink has been proven to assist us in making terrible decisions. 

you and i both - ALL - need to go read something, watch something, listen to something wholly different from ourselves. we need to understand someone else's perspective. we need to stop being afraid of being proven wrong, and learn if we're actually right. 

ok. rant over.

{i still mean it. but i'm done.}

{apparently 36 makes me feisty.}

xo