Living Happily Ever After

Once upon a time . . .

. . . some chick in Fargo sat down and started writing about her life post-divorce on the internet. Not knowing where it would go. Just knowing there were a few things she wanted to say.

And yes.

That was me.

Over the next three years my readers wrote to me to say they found my stories inspiring and hysterical, that I simultaneously lifted them up while making them laugh. The truth is my words lifted me up while teaching me how to find the humor, truth, and always present life lesson in just about everything.

Blogging became both an anchor and north star for me. And such an incredible gift to myself. But I think that is the consequence of pursuing one's passions. If you do what your soul nudges, an authentic life results. And living authentically just feels so darn good.

I hope all of you listen to that little voice that beckons you to live your dreams as well. For it is the most amazing feeling when you do.

Thank you for walking this journey with me over the past several years. I adore you all. And feel so incredibly blessed by your cheerleading and support. The truth is that blogging, however wonderful it has been, is feeling more like a chapter in my life I am ready to conclude.

Here's to taking chances and belieiving in fairy tales.

And the journey through the kind of life that ends with the words. . .

Happily.

Ever.

After.

Love,Audra

These Small Hours

Yesterday evening I accompanied my youngest daughter to her Faith Formation class. At the start the priest approached the pulpit and solemnly announced, “Our meditation this evening is on relationships. Good relationships take years to build. And one minute to destroy.”

Ain’t that the truth?

Relationships are not like savings accounts. You can’t make a lot of great deposits and then one day stop investing. Everything you’ve put into it will not remain pristine if you let it stagnate. If you stop giving to a relationship it will deteriorate.

Think of it this way: I’ve put a lot of effort into raising my children. I have rocked them as infants and played with them as toddlers. I’ve planned elaborate birthdays, hosted play dates, doled out loving discipline and made sure they ate their carrots.

But what if one day I woke up and just said, “Yeah, I’ve been mother of the year all of my adult life. I’ve done a great job. They’re good. I’m just going to go over here now.” I don’t think so. That’s actually called abandonment and it’s not even legal if the children are under 18. Or what if I stayed but just stopped being nice to them? That’s not legal either and it’s actually called abuse.

Relationships require you put forth a regular honest effort. If you take them for granted they will tiptoe away in the night and you’ll be left wondering how that great thing you once had turned to loud silence and dusty fragments.

Think about the relationships in your life that aren’t where you want them to be. Do you want a better relationship with your parents? Call them more often. Is your teenager becoming distant? Go for a Dairy Queen run and catch up on life over an Oreo blizzard. Have you been short and demanding of the people in your life who mean the most to you? Try bigger helpings of humility and eliminate criticism.

One of my favorite songs is "Little Wonders" by Rob Thomas, it encapsulates the concept of life's beauty residing in the little things:

Our lives are made
In these small hours
These little wonders,
These twists & turns of fate
Time falls away,
But these small hours,
These small hours still remain


Relationships not only take years to build but years to maintain. If the relationships in your life aren’t where you want them to be, the good news is you’re the one who can save them.

One small hour and one small minute.

At a time.
******************************

P.S. Sooooo sorry, dear readers, for the giant hiatus from the blog! I have no excuse. Well, I do have an excuse and it's called "wonderful guy descended into my life." Yes. It's true. Audra got a boyfriend and went, "Blog?!?!? What blog?!?" I think I'm coming out of the lovesick haze now so I pinky swear I'll be blogging more regularly again. See you Monday!

Perfectly Perfect.

I am at the age where I think I definitely know who I am. At least I hope so.

I’ve lived long enough to have a pretty good handle on my strengths, weaknesses, gifts, and flaws. And trust me, the flaws list is long! But over the years I truly think I’ve been able to transform one of those negatives into a positive. And that is this: my anal retentive inability to accept anything less than perfection.

This honestly isn’t the worst quality in the world . Asking nothing less than your best of yourself is a great thing. But when you begin to apply it to others? Yeah. Uber bee-otch. All the way. Case in point, back in my 20’s I think I truly made several people’s lives miserable, probably my family’s most of all. I am a neat freak and nazi when it comes to how I think things should be done. The bed is made this way, the towels are folded this way, and if you put that non-dishwasher safe Pampered Chef ice cream scoop in the dishwasher one more time I am going to smack you with it.

Thankfully, the good Lord allowed me to live long enough to do something quite necessary with that attitude:

Grow up and get over it.

Eventually I learned to pick my battles and stop flipping out over an ice cream scoop. Or maybe just to stop buying things that aren’t dishwasher safe and the complications that those decision introduce into my domestic harmony.

Don’t get me wrong. I did not give up my perfectionist ways. I just tried to direct them somewhere healthier: at myself.

For example, I try to soak up human wisdom as often as I can by reading books that nurture my heart and soul. One of my favorites is Dale Carnegie’s classic self help book, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living,” which I read at least once year. I’d never really been an anxious person but I just loved “How to Win Friends and Influence People” so much I instantly made it my life’s goal to read everything Dale Carnegie ever wrote. (In fact, the man is so inspiring that if a copy of a grocery list he once jotted down showed up on an episode of Pawn Stars I just may need to make a pilgrimage to Las Vegas to buy that sucker!)

They are classic books published almost a century ago, but the attitudes Carnegie touts are as vital to emotional human growth today as ever.

My teenage daughter is dealing with some of the expected anxiety of adolescence and I suggested the other day that she delve into the book. I read the first chapter aloud to her and we laughed and nodded together as we related to Carnegie’s plethora of analogies and anecdotes. From Jesus telling us to concentrate only on our daily bread (not yesterday’s stale bread, and not where on earth we’ll find bread two weeks from now in case we lose our jobs or a natural disaster occurs) to stories of people of mundane intellect who accomplished amazing things simply by doing the best they could one day at a time.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Exploring these mindsets and concepts over the years has solidified my perfectionist approach to life. I do my best every day. And I do not worry about tomorrow. And I don’t lose any sleep. I don’t wonder what’s going to happen. I just know whatever happens will be fine and I couldn’t have changed it.

Because I just did the very best I could with what I had.

That day.

Perfectionism can be a strength if used correctly. As long as our measurements are only made against ourselves and it is applied realistically it can bring great peace. And even joy.

I have several life accomplishments of which I am quite proud of as a result: my daughters, my career, my friendships, and even this blog. And they all exist because I gave thanks for the gifts I had that day, did the best I could with them, and enjoyed my daily bread with no thought toward the yesterdays I’d left behind or the tomorrows I cannot control.

As a result no one has been yelled at for dishwasher infractions in my house for well over a decade. And some days the beds just aren’t made right but everyone still sleeps comfortably.

Life is great but it is not because I’m perfect (hardly!) It’s because I always give nothing less than my best.

And the life that results is perfect.

For me.
*****************************
Thanks for a great weekend, Mr. H. I think the dollar mocha, comfy seats, and inspiring message was one of my favorite parts...next to you. Muah!

Still alive!

I know, I've fallen off the bloggin' wagon this week! Thank you for all the kind inquiries about where I've been. I went to the farm and helped my mom for a week recover from surgery (nothing life threatening) and then I've just been engulfed with my children, my job, and other wondeful things in my life. I am so blessed . . . and I hope you are as well.

I'm making great progress with my novel and am trying to discern if I should just start blogging once a week . . . I may. Sorry! You are all so wonderful and supportive of my writing, it would be hard to cut back but if I am ever to realize my writing goals I am going to have to divide my time accordingly in order to accomplish them.

Have a blessed weekend!

~Audra

P.S. Congratulations to my dear childhood friend who gave birth to her fifth girl this week! It seems like just yesterday we were the little girls. Now when get together . . . there are seven girls between us. Sugar and spice and everything nice, my friend. Muah!

Traveling in Packs with Pacts

They fill the tables next to me at restaurants. And travel in packs.

“Look,” my friend Casey motions to me. We are seated outdoors on a restaurant patio for a friend’s birthday party. She nudges my attention toward the group of women seated next to us. Although they are carting packages and presents their mood is solemn. “You see that?” she whispers and then quietly announces,

“Look at their faces.”

I glance over my shoulder to see six women just a few feet from me. They may as well be at a funeral. None of them look happy.

“They’re married,” she diagnoses.

And I laugh. Not at them. But at something else. At a past that used to be mine in another life. And Casey’s too.

That used to be us.

“And look,” she continues her assessment like a sociologist studying another culture, “they all own one piece of jewelry. And no one is wearing a vibrant color.”

It’s all true. What she says. The homogeny continues beyond that. They all have short hair and many are a bit overweight. I imagine they all live in brand new split levels and drive their children to school each day in their shiny Yukons and Expeditions.

Never smiling.

Casey squeezes my hand and smiles, “That’s not us anymore.”

I smile back.

On another day at another restaurant I am seated next to another group of women. But this group laughs and jokes and shrieks. They talk about the Twilight series as if it is classic literature and make plans to attend a Lady Ga Ga concert. They are all in great shape and their hair, if not long, is trendy and youthful, their jewelry fun and varied. Their laughter wafts through the restaurant but it intoxicates not irritates.

You think I’m going to say they’re all single, don’t you?

Guess again. This is not the juxtaposition you are expecting, dear reader.

They’re all married too.

But it’s a different kind of married.

The kind where you don’t lose yourself or give up. Instead, the mystical kind where you find yourself and (gasp!) could it be?

Love your husband.

It is possible.

I saw it in the restaurant next to me just last week.

If I’ve learned anything these past few years it is this: life is divided into two camps, the happy and the sad, and they gravitate toward another like magnets. Happy attracts happy. Sad attracts sad.

Ever heard misery loves company? It does. But happy loves company too. Like attracts like.

I have since analyzed the gabillion reasons I stayed so unhappily married for so unhappily long. There are several but one contributing factor that it took me a while to realize is that in that life my friends were just as miserably married as I, if not more so! Several of the married couples I knew were just shuffling through the motions. I just thought that’s the way it was.

Interestingly? My unhappily married friends did not stay friends with me after my divorce. But my happily married ones did.

Isn’t that interesting? Yes. Mull that. It’s deep. It seems I abandoned an unwritten pact to stay eternally in despair with them. It has been a life lesson that has imparted deep wisdom of which I am so grateful to have, even if attaining it was through something so incredibly difficult.

Never again will I surround myself with friends who pity themselves, who settle for less, and who don’t believe that the power to find happiness resides within. Never again will I waste my time with people who portray themselves as victims.

Life is meant to be toasted to, embraced hard, and lived beautifully. And to do anything else? Is wasteful.

And sad.

Recently a new guy in my life asked me, “Why does it seem like when women get married they get fat and cut all their hair off?” I just laughed knowingly and said I wasn’t sure. But that the good news was I’d already lived that life.

For even if I ever do say I do again, my femininity and size four jeans are here to stay. Along with something even more beautiful and unwavering.

My belief that life is what I make it.

And I’m making mine?

Happy.

******************************
P.S. Just for the record? I do think I would have to draw the line at discussing the Twilight series as if it were classic literature. I'm just sayin' . . . :-)

R.I.P. Laptop!

My laptop crashed this week and my desktop wasn't looking too good either . . . who are these people who just sit in dark rooms and write viruses? Good grief!

I'll be back online Monday. I've had a fabulous week and life is grand. Hope the same for you, marvelous readers!

Love and blessings,
Audra

Sorry!

Going to blog tonight...pinky swear. :-)

~Audra