This one's about family.

First of all, aren't they beautiful? I just saw this on Hannah's blog (look at it here) and I just had to put it up.  That babe that I wrote about here is actually 5'10" and that stud is just about my height (5'7"), so don't let this picture confuse you too much.  Anyway you look at them though, they're just downright adorable and all kinds of wonderful.  Which is really what this post is about.

By the way, I fractured my wrist a week ago due to an unfortunate collision with the ground while I was riding my bike, so I've been wearing this stupid wrap/splint/cast thing all week and have an appointment with a surgeon on Thursday to determine whether or not I need surgery to fix it (navicular fracture). The reason I bring this up is because I am being rebellious and took it off so I could type.  It doesn't hurt too badly right now, so what's the harm?  Danget, people!  Typing just ain't gonna happen with that thing on my wrist/thumb!  


So anyway, what prompted this post?  Every person who has said that marriage is hard, family is hard, and that the best days of my life are the days I spend alone at school or wherever else my life leads me.  Let me make my opinion perfectly clear before I explain it: THEY'RE WRONG.

I sincerely hope that whoever is reading this agrees with me, even if I am young and have not yet experienced more of what life has to offer.  I am young, I am naive in many a way, and I have so much to learn, but I have felt joy and incredible sadness in this life of mine already.  I know what is important in this life and I know what is less so.  I know me, which is something not enough people can say about themselves.

Here we go.

So they say marriage is hard.  Okay, I know.  And I expect nothing less.  But the thing about those people is that they dwell on that, at least when they're talking to me.  I have heard it time and time again, and I don't mind until they tell me that these (referring to college years) are the best years of my life.  You know what I think when they talk like that?  I think it's so incredibly sad that THAT is what they have to say about their marriages and their lives.  Hard?  Yeah, life is hard.  It is full of struggle, greif, and pain.  It's ridiculous, and I am the first person to say it.  I'm not the obnoxious happy person that only sees the good in life.  I'm realistic.  But I believe in happiness and just as much as I believe in sadness.  Life is hard, but heavens..!  Happiness is a choice, guys.  I'm sorry life hasn't gone the way you've wanted it to go, but choose to be happy with what you have!  Happiness is a choice just as much as love is a choice, and maybe sometime people forget that after they choose to stick with someone and love someone, they also need to choose happiness.  Does my rant make any sense?  I hope so.  That's just one aspect of what kills me about those people.

And now, what about children?  Children are hard, too.  I'm not married, and I have no children, but I know children.  I grew up with my two older siblings, and now I am watching my younger siblings grow up.  I was fifteen when my dad died, and my youngest brother was four.  I have loved that boy, and the other boy, and the other girl so much.  I have spent so much time helping take care of those kids and loving those kids, that I feel so responsible for them sometimes.  One of the reasons I absolutely hate being out here is because I don't get to be around them all the time.  It's not like it's always perfect.  Half the time I swear they are just trying to make each other upset, or they're crying, or they're just completely in "the fog" (Dad's term for teenager stupidity).  I've spent nights cleaning up their puke, holding them when they cry, or just listening to them talk because they needed it.  Children need constant love and patience and everything else you could possibly think of.  I know that.  They're so completely exhausting.  And yet, I love them.  Every single of one of them.

Those people are talking about family.

Yes, family is hard.  Family brings the most joy and misery a person could ever imagine, and all because of love.  That is what those people are referring to when they say life is hard.  But how could a person possibly think that living on your own, with roommates who move in and out of your life, would be the best years of your life?  I cannot, and I absolutely will not believe that that is the way we are created.  I have experienced wonderful times with my family, and I have felt completely lost within family.  Sleepless nights and endless tears of just feeling lost.  But even with all of that, I still believe that the best years of my life will be the years when I am surrounded by my family.  Those years growing up with my dear, dear siblings and my parents, and in the future when I will marry a wonderful man and have some sort of wonderful family with him.  Whatever that means.  I know without a doubt that the greatest joy comes from family.

I know one man who is married, who has children, who loves to tell me everything negative about marriage and families, and reminds me that I am living the best years of my life.  I love him, and his wonderful family, but I wish I could hear something positive come out of his mouth.  And then there is this other man I know who is finding his way through a hideous divorce (all divorces are hideous), but who stills finds his joy from his family.  He would drop everything for his children and for his wife still.  Everything.  He adores his children like nobody I've ever met.  I'm so moved by it.  Even in the middle of a divorce, he is full of hope and love, and I know that he would never say that the years he spent alone were the best years of his life.  Shoot.  He'd probably say that what he's going through now is one of the best (and worst) of his life, just because he's learning so much and appreciating life all over again.  Two different men, two very different outlooks on life.

So whatever the circumstance, happiness is possible.  Right?  I think so.  I sincerely hope that no person would read this and be offended.  I don't know the struggles that every person is going through.  Oh, heavens no.  I just hope that amid the difficulty of it all, that these people experience beauty and joy, too.

I'll wrap up this incredibly long rant now.  But let me just end by making this promise: someday I will do everything in my power to create a happy, beautiful, loving, trusting family.  I will never give up, even though there is no doubt that it will be the hardest thing I will ever do, because I am pretty positive that in it I will find the best years of my life.


But then again, maybe I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.