Beautiful Realities: Lessons Learned Part 1

January has come and gone. It seems so cliche to say "the years fly more quickly the older I get," but it's true. Perhaps it isn't getting older. Perhaps it's just having more to live for. Maybe it's when we're too busy being happy and grateful that time goes the quickest.

If you think that means life is always perfect around this tiny, chaotic, busy little whirlwind of a home, I'm sorry for creating such a misconception. It's not perfect. There are a lot of messes, and a lot of tears. (Mostly the kids. ;)) There are a lot of moments when I clean up messes instead of sitting on the floor playing with my kids. I still haven't mastered going to bed at night, which means I'm usually tired in the morning. Med school is still insane, and my husband is gone more than I'd like. But at the end of the day, life does feel pretty great. Not because it's perfect. Maybe even because it's NOT perfect.

You can read here the post I wrote last month as a kick off for my year long project, and goals for 2014. There is still a big gap between what I know and what I feel, what I want to be and what I am. But here are two things I learned this month from this project:

Capturing beauty is a skill.
   Just like photography, looking for, finding, and capturing beauty in our lives takes practice.

Happiness is learning to see the beauty that exists right in front of us.

  Day 4: My house is a mess, and we are still not unpacked from the vacation we returned from four days before. The laundry is out of control, there are piles everywhere and I am going crazy. I promised myself today I would do whatever it took to restore order to my home. My two year old wakes up with his eyes swollen shut. My to do list is a million miles long, and I throw a small tantrum to myself about how I don't have time for this today. We take a trip to the doctor, both children are cranky, and the one year old won't nap and screams all afternoon. We take a trip to the pharmacy and urgent care for child #2. All waits are over two hours, so I give up and go get pizza for dinner. My children are jumping on kitchen table and smearing pizza all over themselves. My house is bigger mess and seems to be screaming at me that I am a disorganized failure. I snap at my husband... more than once, mostly because I need to be mad at someone. I finally calm down enough to accept that I might not get anything done today, and sit and rock my tired, sick, crying needy children instead. I am so glad I figured that out before they went to bed that night, even if it took me all day to get there. I finally put children down. My messy house is quiet and peaceful. Exhausted, I take a few minutes to unwind at the computer, and upload my photo of the day:

Suddenly my day doesn't seem so bad. Not because it wasn't frustrating and long and exhausting. Not because the chaos isn't a very real feeling. But I realized when I saw this picture, that this was a very real part of my day too. 

I love my lens, for blurring out the mess in the background... because that is just where it should be. A blurred out part of a background to the sunshine that is the foreground. My camera taught me an important lesson that day. Capturing this moment in time changed my perspective, in a very literal way. Suddenly I stopped feeling frustrated, and felt humbled, and grateful instead.

Life is beautiful. Learn to see it through the right lens. THAT'S what I learned this month.

So here is the January 2014 Installment, in all of it's grubby faced, messy housed, imperfect, perfection.

Happy January!!