The Little House

Welcome back fellow reader, follower, friend, family, whoever you are that found and clicked onto this link//post… I hope you find this content to be relatable and I also just happen to be jotting down some scrambled thoughts I’ve had over what I’m about to express within this blog. So enjoy my thoughts ◡̈

Do you remember when you were a kid?

Making “pies” out of dirt + water? Playing with barbies or dolls pretending that they can talk and have real conversations with people? Maybe even playing outside with friends but everyone was a different character in the “game”. I remember me and my sister reenacting a high school musical 2 scene where Sharpay Evans is singing by the pool and falls into it. Over and Over and Over… we probably fell back into the pool 150 times by the end of the day.

We would pretend to be doctors, and teachers, and moms, or whatever we wanted to be.

Whatever we thought of. We could be.

We were BIG thinkers.

Constantly thinking about being adults. Constantly thinking about the future. Constantly letting our internal desires be played out in real time but within “pretend play”.

BUT.

We do get older.

Our imagination can shrink… or does it? Does our imagination go away as we get older… or do we just stop pretend playing and start living out some of our internal desires as real-life.

Do we start taking the steps to get where we want to be rather than pretending-playing ourselves to be at the end goal?

I know I probably played nurse a million times as a child. Possibly most people reading this may have played “pretend-nurse” as a child or even “pretend-doctor”. But NEVER in my childhood… did I play “pretend-nursing school student” or “pretend-medical school student”.

WE thought big thoughts. We dreamed BIG.

We had our eyes and our internal desires set upon the glamorous mountain top goal without the hiking up the mountain part. We didn’t think about all the work. About the blisters on our feet from the shoes or the snakes that could possibly bite us on the way up. We didn’t include the hard work it takes to get there within our pretend play.

We just simply had BIG thoughts.

[Now stay with me here. Stay with my thought process on this one]

I know that I find myself way too often living inside my head.

& What I mean by that is I almost take the pretend play that I encountered//created as a child and have built a house for it inside my head. All the pretend play lives there now. Some may call it daydreaming, or fantasizing, but I simply just say...

“I’m living in my head”. (I’ll explain in a second)

In my last blog (also the first blog), I mentioned how we are future thinkers, and we are almost constantly thinking in future tenses - > which we do. We think about spouses, and babies, and puppies, and careers, and cars, and where to live, what houses we want to live in, how we want to decorate the house, our kids going to school and to prom, and getting married, then having grandkids, and then retirement and so on and so forth. Constantly reaching for the next thing.

I know for me and many of my friends… our next big thing is thinking about marriage, and starting a family, and getting our careers started or even pushing ourselves within our lifestyles. & Sometimes our eyes are so fixated on those end goals. Marriage. Babies/kids. A good career.

We “pretend play” scenarios in our head of us within those roles, our imagination takes us to those places where we have achieved those goals. We seem so happy in those goals.

We seem so happy.

We think, “if only I can get to [this point], I would be happy”

“if only I had a husband, or a baby girl, or a successful career, I would be happy”

Sometimes I can get so fixated on the internal desires that I forget how to live presently// on the outside of my mind and live in the hike up the mountain.

I dream of getting married one day (of course any girl does), but I almost too often live inside my head about it. I think about who it will be, what our first dance song will be, who will be there, what would our wedding pictures look like, what should I say in my vows.

I live in it.

My mind fixates on it and then I’m stuck. I’m stuck in the cycle of pretend play. I’m stuck in the cycle of the daydream.

& Then…

I am so stuck inside living in that little house inside my brain…. Where the pretend play lives.

That I build expectations around it.

I expect the conversation to go the way my brain rehearsed//pretend-played it in my head.

I expect my friend to comfort me the way my brain had pre-planned it.

I expect the person I pretend-played walked down the wedding aisle to be the same.

I expect my family to reach out to me and respond the way I imagined.

I expect myself to be the same weight I was at 20

I expect my sister to always come to me for everything and to think of me as her bestie.

I expect my besties to constantly be okay with my absence but accepting of me when I’m back.

I too often live inside this house.

The walls are built with expectations. Pretend-play resides inside.

And the house keeps adding on.

There’s a new sunroom, and 4 new guest rooms, and a bigger back deck.

My brain does renovations. It allows more room for more pretend play. More expectations. More living inside a false reality.

An Illusional reality.

There is such a problem with this kind of living…. It's NOT living at all. Its possibly just sleeping while youre awake. I guess “day dreaming”. But it’s a constant entrapment. Literally living inside these fantasized scenes.

I mean…. “in my head” I already am married, have 3 kids (two adopted), 2 dogs, some goats (who doesn’t love those cute little fainting goats… yes they wear pajamas), a chinchilla, and we live in a house that has a big front and back porch, possibly a pool (for the goats of course), and all my friends basically are exactly how I imagined them to be.

Why should I live there....

It's not real.

Firstly, it doesn't ever show the transition of how it came to be. Theres not low points, failures, theres no work shown as to how my little house got to be. It just is there...just as "pretend-play" was in childhood.

&…… if you’ve never heard this in your life- I hope you hear these words.

Expectations cause pressure.

They cause... PRESSURE!!!!

They cause pressure for you because you expect people to be a way or a situation to go over like how you thought. and then NEWSSS FLASSHHH. it doesn’t.

It causes pressure for others because you are fitting them inside a box. You are putting an elephant into a bathtub. You cannot do that.

You cannot tell a nose to do the job of an ear and then get upset when it cant hear sounds.

We let our own thoughts, our own expectations of people rule us- rule our interactions, our responses, our emotions. We get upset when people don’t treat us the way we expected them to. It takes us by surprise. We don’t like to be surprised like that.

We are only hurting ourselves and hurting others by living in that little house.

It's unsatisfying. Nothing will satisfy those expectations. Because even if they do happen the way you thought, or the person reacted the way you wanted. It’s a temporary relief//happiness and then a “now what” feeling or a “okay, whats next”.

Nothing satisfies the expectations.

Because those are temporary.

Because people don’t know your heart... shoot you probably don’t know your heart as much as you think.

People can’t possibly know what you expect of them (especially if you never voice it) & they certainly can’t always and forever fit perfectly inside the house you created & live in.

But I know someone who does satisfy.

I know someone who is eternal.

Someone who knows your heart.

Who wants to live in that house.

He is so kind, gentle, lowly, patient, a listener, a noticer of those hurting, a peace, a warmth, someone who knows your heart and knows what you need when you need it.

He knows your thoughts and your heart. He created it.

One thing that you can take away from this long-ranting-possibly-most-boring blog post… is that Jesus is the fulfiller of any expectation you have.

If you really think about it.......... you create expectations around friends because you are thinking about how you want to feel… noticed and loved and heard and accepted.

You want a spouse to have an intimacy, and a bond and a love that is special and unique to you two. You want someone to be your “ride or die” person… who is there no matter what.

Right by your side.

You don’t realize that Jesus already fills all those expectations that you have of the world. And it’s not temporary. He satisfies it. &

You may be too distracted from living inside the house to see that someone’s been knocking at the door the whole time.

He wants in.

He wants your heart.

Expecting someone to fill a Jesus-sized role or a situation to go as perfect as you created it inside your mind… it won’t happen to fill you and satisfy your soul the way you pictured.

Stop adding onto the house.

Stop being stuck inside that house.

Someone is knocking.

Go answer it.

Live outside that little house.