Life Lessons Learned

Some lessons just have to be learned. Whether or not anyone tried to tell me some of these things, I didn't really understand or grasp them until going through them. When my daughter is in high school, I want to try to convey these things as best I can but she'll probably need to figure them out on her own:

*God is faithful, no matter where you go. I could list hundreds of stories...but I'll just leave it at that.
*Life is hard. Life is unfair. There are always trials to overcome and things to learn and ways to grow. I remember a pastor telling me when I graduated that life is HELL, but yet he encouraged me that God was going to be with me through it.
*Money is important. I didn't save enough of it back when I was single and had more to throw around. It would have been so wise to invest or buy land back when I was living at home! Yet, I'm glad I had the attitude of trusting God and not seeking after money in High School like most kids my age. Lots of little children came to know Christ because I committed my summers to missions. God has always taken care of my every need and provided more than I could ask for. People tried to tell me to go for a degree of some kind like nursing that I could use in missions or in America. Nursing is definitely not my thing. I was hungry for God's Word and a Bible degree. I'm so thankful to have gone to a Bible college but I think now I realize now how good it would be to have a degree or specialty on top of that (whether in massage therapy, beautician work, as a chef or author, etc.) in the event that my husband died or became disabled or for working when my kids are grown. I know God will always take care of us so I don't need to trust in a degree, but to those of you young women reading this, it does help in today's world. One perk to me not having a degree is less pressure to work. If I could make $20 or more an hour as a nurse, it'd be very tempting not to stay home with my kids or to try to juggle working nights or working part time, etc. I also have come to realize that a big part of me wishes I had a fancy degree only for my own pride and status when talking with other women who have fancy degrees and that I can be a wonderful, hard-working mother without one. So, whether or not my daughter chooses to get a degree, I'll support her in her decision.
*Family is for life. My parents always gave us the impression that at 18 we were on our own and they were done parenting. We were to leave home or pay rent! I had notions of being an overseas missionary and/or getting out of my prairie existence to see the world. I never realized until I was in college how hard the separation from family can be. I never realized how heartbreaking it would be to say good-bye and how much I would miss them even though I was "technically" an adult. I never realized that family should be treasured and time with them is fleeting. I saw them as people to escape from to get out on my own and experience independence, but never realized that my heart strings will be forever tied to them, no matter what their faults.
*No matter how old you are, it absolutely KILLS you to see your parent's marriage falling apart. That sometimes parents can act like kids and you have to be the "parent." Praise the Lord that God is great and mighty and saved and restored my parent's marriage before it ended in divorce!
*How difficult it is to marry someone far from your family in distance. I don't regret for one milisecond marrying King Jo and he's worth everything! But the reality is that one set or both sets of our parents are always going to be heartbroken that we don't live nearby and our kids won't know their grandparents as well and we ourselves will miss out on a lot of quality family time due to the distance. Another aspect is that we spend all of our vacation time going to MN, or if we live in MN, going to WY to visit family. I didn't have a clue how hard it would be to be so far from loved ones and have to go back and forth all the time. It's going to mean a LIFETIME of travel!!!
*That marrying young isn't bad like people make it out to be! My brother told us that we would be destitute, my parents thought is was risky and that we were throwing our lives down the tubes, and everyone told us constantly we should wait and enjoy life before marriage and that young marriages usually end in divorce. I LOVED getting married young! I have no regrets! I loved having kids soon after marriage too because I feel like being a wife and a mom is what I was created to be! Everyone says to wait and enjoy your freedom and build a strong marriage for a few years before having kids, but I think nothing makes a marriage stronger like going through the stages of pregnancy together and watching the miracle of a child enter the world together and raising her/him together. I'm so thankful that King Jo and I can enjoy each other in our youth and that we got hitched before either one of us dated other people or gave our hearts away!
*That being a parent is wonderful, amazing, confusing, and HARD! I never appreciated my parents for what they did when I was a kid as much as I do now when I'm in the trenches of raising young ones. I never understood how much they loved me. I never realized that the reason dad was gone so much was because he was working to put food on our table. I thought mom was mean or cranky when she got stressed or weary raising us 3 mostly by herself. I now know just how many thousands of poopy diapers she must have changed and how hard she worked to give me a wonderful childhood. Now, I understand. I understand what it is to cry over my baby because I love him so much and the weight a parent carries to try to do everything right and keep their child safe and healthy in an uncertain world.
*Purity is a treasure worth fighting for! At any moment you can give it away to the many men who will gladly take it from you. But once given, you can never get it back. I want to encourage my daughter, and other young women, to go above and beyond in staying pure for their husbands because it will save them the pain that comes from disobeying God in this area (and wrestling with guilt, single parenthood, STDs, etc.) There is so much peace and trust in a marriage where both are virgins when they wed.

These are just a few of the things I want to pass on. I'll add more to this list as they come to mind.