I had this realization in the last couple of weeks. My family life looks different than it used to look and what I imagined it looking like. We rarely have meals where we all sit down together and eat. We rarely have the same schedule two nights in a row, and we are moving in more directions than I can count most of the time. Maybe you can relate? We have a plan in our head only to find out that more times that not, that isn't what is really taken place.
When I begin this journey as Gina Colburn, instead of Gina Swank. I was going to be a wife and a mom. I would have wonderful home cooked meals, clean laundry , and a clean house. I would have time to be the room parent for all of my children, the soccer mom, and the wife that was always ready for whatever my husband needed. This image of what I thought and what actually took place were very different. I adjusted and loved the life I had. We ate dinner together most evenings, we had a clean house maybe once a month, the kids went to bed at 8:00 every evening and Jason and I had time to watch our favorite shows. We adjusted.
Now it is time for adjustment again. Life is not like that anymore. The season of life we are in is full. Not busy- a good friend of mine pointed out busy is Satan's word and I should not use it...so life is full right now. We rarely have a homemade meal together, we never watch our favorite shows, and we run and we run until we collapse in our bed at night. This is not healthy. So I had been praying that God would show me something  I could do that would help us in this season of our lives. We are in the verge of having 2 teenagers, one who wants to get her permit and drive-yikes! The other, is just trying to figure out what it means to be a young man in today's world.
So, Yesterday, I did some soul searching and found that this season won't look like any other season of our lives. It will be full of great things that we will  only go through once with our kids. Bed time will probably get later and later, meals will be quick and on the go but we can still have the family I always dreamed of having.
You see my expectations and God's are vastly different. He doesn't require me to have a home cooked meal every night for my family. He does require me to nourish my family both physically and spiritually. He doesn't require my house be spotless, but that I am spotless before Him and I teach my kids what it means to be clean before Him. Life is Full, it is full of blessings, full of love, full of trials, full of life. But our Life is also full of GOD! We aren't a perfect family, we are just a family on an amazing journey with God. He hasn't let us down one time in the last 14 and  half years. I don't think he will now during this new season of our life.
it may look different for awhile, but on the other side we will see the wonderful memories, the lessons we learned and how amazing God was through it.
So, tonight I savor our evening at home, with homemade chicken noodle soup, leaves falling off the trees and my family all together around our dining room table. This is living the life God called me to live, for the right now!