Living YOUR best life.

I was perusing Instagram the other day and came across an old friend from high schools picture. This picture brought me to his page where his pictures were amazing, photos from all over the world, photos of an amazing life. Perfectly set up, perfect backgrounds, just the pictures that make you instantly feel in awe and want to pin on your Pinterest page for that trip that you will take one day or that thing that you’ll create when you get to it.

Then I noticed a theme to the comments, they all seemed to be about how he is living his best life.

This instantly set in a feeling of sadness and inferiority. I’ve never been out of the country, not even to the west coast before. I’ll never see these things he’s seen, touch the beautiful things, make the neat things, shoot I won’t even make a fraction of the things on my Pinterest. We’ve never been on a real family vacation. I shop at thrift and second hand stores, we have to pick and choose when we pay bills, we can’t go to the grocery store and get whatever we want, sometimes my kids lunch accounts go negative, I’ve had to ask family members for money to get through, we rent a tiny home, should I continue? Basically we may be like a lot of you, a normal family who lives paycheck to paycheck. Chris has an amazing job, I make a little from my businesses, but sometimes it’s just not enough.

I am not living my best life. Darn it.

Wait what.. no.. he is living HIS best life.

And his best life isn’t mine!

I have a beautiful family, an absolute amazing new baby girl, a husband who loves me deeply, a cozy home, an SUV that gets us from place to place, friends, a business that has had its ups and downs but is still hanging in there. I love to create, I paint, I read my Bible, I love deeply, I give what I can, I show up, I see the beauty in the small things. I appreciate a beautiful sunset, a cool breeze, fresh water running through my toes and most of all the looks in my children’s faces when they see me. I’ve danced in the kitchen with each of my kids when they were babies. I’ve seen every first. When I am distracted while nursing Marlee and I look down and she’s just looking up at me with so much love. When Zane won’t cross the street without waiting for me. When Jake gets out of the car every morning and says “see you in a little bit”. When Kya just wants to come home and crawl in my spot in bed.

The point is, I AM living MY best life. I don’t need to be posting fancy pictures on social media to prove it. I don’t have to travel to do it. Maybe today my best life is nursing my baby in her baby carrier as we walk through Target, maybe next year it will be on a real vacation, but for right now my best life is right here in my arms.

Don’t feel inferior friends, we’re all trying our best, you don’t need things others have to live your best life.. because you already are!

Today, if you’re feeling down, take the time to write out a list of all of the beautiful things in your life.. everything that reminds you that you ARE living YOUR best life.

❤️ Melinda