What Really Matters

Most of y’all know that we spent this weekend moving my sister and her sweet family of four into their new home.  It was this experience coupled with a conversation with a teacher in the teachers’ lounge that have me focused on what’s really important in life.

Deep thoughts for a Sunday night, I know.

It started last week.  A teacher at my school and I were, well, pretty much complaining about people who complain about EVERYTHING.  This teacher and I share a lot of the same see-the-glass-half-full perspectives, and it’s always a breath of fresh air to converse with him.  He ended our conversation with, “Ya know, if you really think about it, I mean really think about it… there are very few things in life that REALLY matter.  I mean think about it – at the end of the day, what are the things that are REALLY important?”  After I told him our conversation was getting a little too deep for water-cooler-teacher-lounge-talk, I walked away with his words on repeat in my mind… like an old 8-track tape you keep rewinding to your favorite song, because singing it out loud just feels so good.

We all know I’m one to sweat the small stuff.  Worry about everything, and then worry about how much I’m worrying.  Even though I’m constantly striving to be better, I find myself going back to making a big to-do about nothing.  Granted, to give myself some credit, I think I’ve come a long way since my little girl was born…  There’s nothing like having your heart love so much it feels like it’s going to explode into a million tiny pieces to give you some perspective.

But for whatever reason, his particular words stuck with me.

And they seemed to ring loud and clear all weekend long as we buried ourselves in the chaos that comes along with moving a family of four (with an almost-3-year-old and an eight-month-old) into a new house in a new state.

Because the chaos was absolutely beautiful.

I kept taking a step back, taking it all in – and mind you, this experience wasn’t about me at all.  Which was even better, because it was about some people I love more than life itself.

There was noise, lots of noise.  There were babies laughing, babies crying, babies in boxes, babies eating packing tape, babies’ unsteady steps across empty rooms, moving trucks, sweat, wires, hammers, drills, lousy naps, junk-food-eating, unpacking, carrying heavy boxes, trips to storage units, backyard catch, playroom catch, setting up rooms, folding clothes, tons of late-night laughter and story-telling…

But mostly, there were dreams coming true.  A family, who is so deserving, who has worked so hard, moving into this house that is just incredible and now my sister gets to be a stay-at-home-mom in this new dream house and they’re in this cute new town and even though they don’t even know where the grocery store is and their house is still full of boxes to be unpacked and pictures to be hung and dust to be cleaned they don’t care because they have their awesome little family and at the end of the day isn’t that what it’s really all about?

It’s about sitting on the kitchen counter with your best friend, eating cake batter fudge right out of the bowl, drinking wine, and telling stories… it’s about lounging on the couch way past your bedtime, surrounded by family and friends, laughing so hard it hurts.

So I’m gonna keep rewinding this tape – I’m gonna keep replaying this song in my head to remind myself of what really matters in life. 

Because we only get one shot, ya know? 

Only one chance…

Only one today…

And no do-overs.