When Life Gives You Lemons

 

... make lemonade. Or one of my favorites via my sister (circa 1998), stuff them in your bra. 

Whatever you choose to do with your lemons, the point is making something sweet out of something sour. It often takes me a little while of sucking on sour lemons to recognize the potential for something sweet. This weekend, I made some proverbial lemonade. 

It snowed in Charlotte for the first time in 2 years on Saturday. It just happened to start blizzarding while my mom and I were on the road, headed out for a nice afternoon. In the South, we don't handle snow very well. There aren't enough plows, they don't typically salt the roads and people just generally aren't used to driving in the stuff. So, to be safe we changed our plans and headed home.

On our way back into my parent's neighborhood we saw a group of very excited children sledding during the snow storm. Remember, these are kids that go years without seeing/playing in the snow. Their joy was contagious. 

Instead of sulking about our change of plans, I put on the Pandora holiday station and my mom and I baked Christmas cut outs and whipped up some hot cocoa. We made our own white Christmas in the middle of February.

 

Life threw us a small lemon, and we were able to squeeze out a bit of lemonade. Fast forward to the next day, and making lemonade didn't come quite as easy. 

My sister (and her family) and my parents are both currently house hunting. We went to visit prospective houses for each of them. Both are lucky enough to be looking at total dream homes.

My parents and my sister and brother-in-law work very hard and are generous people. They've earned the excitement that surrounds picking out their future homes and will undoubtedly make all who enter feel warm and welcomed.

There was something sour though, about returning to our humble abode after touring such big beautiful houses. It wasn't quite jealousy, because I feel genuine happiness for my family members. It was more a mixture of self doubt combined with a laser beam focus on all of the things that I'd like to change about our home.

I'd love to say that this was a fleeting feeling, but that would be a lie. So, the quote below is just as much of a reminder for myself as I hope it will be for you.

Sometimes (read most of the time) we don't have everything that we desire. I'm making an effort to remember that pining over high ceilings and hard wood floors pales in comparison to what many others might have on their hearts and minds right now. 

When I try to look for the sweet, I notice that this home we've made for ourselves ain't so bad after all. The living room has really gorgeous morning light and there's a big ol' bathtub for me to soak away all of my troubles. 

In reality, our house was once something we could have only dreamed of. The best part, we made our house into a home together.

Do you ever struggle with comparing yourself to others? 

What helps you snap out of it and become more aware of the sweet stuff in your life?