here's to 2016!

First of all, I literally cannot even fathom the fact that it's going to be 2016 in less than two days! My mind is just beyond blown. It's been quite a year though, I'll tell you that. Here's just a brief summary:

- pregnancy
- miscarriage
- new apartment
- like five different hair colours
- i turned 22
- kelly turned 24
- went to school
- started working full-time
- went on a cruise
- started a business
- and basically just overall rocked it!

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How To Avoid Comparison

My mom has said from the very beginning of my life "everybody is going through something and nobody is actually as perfect as they appear." I just never believed her. One of my biggest trials was looking at somebody else's life and wishing that I had it. I wished I looked like certain girls, or had the money that some people had, or got to travel like some other people, and I could never understand why my life wasn't as lucky as theirs.

"Comparison is the thief of joy." As we're going about our lives staring at other people and wondering why our lives aren't as fortune as them we are actually diminishing ourselves and putting ourselves down.

So, how can we avoid doing that and what can we do to make ourselves feel better about our own lives and circumstances?

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The Value in Planning

If you have ever made plans for your life then you'll be able to concur with me that they hardly ever work out the way that you plan them and so it can be really hard in even bothering to make plans for your life. For example, when we got pregnant we had all of these plans for what was going to happen for the next year and a half and all of those plans had to do with me being a stay-at-home mom and how that was going to work. We were very happy with our plans and excited for our future.

Now we have new plans. We have plans for when we want to have a baby, where we want to live next semester, what we see ourselves in five years- but the truth is; probably not one of those plans will actually work out the way that we want and have planned.

So, why should be bother making plans if they don't work out?

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Father's Day

fa·ther

noun.

1.

a. A male whose sperm unites with an egg, producing an embryo.

b. A male whose impregnation of a female results in the birth of a child.

What's great about the world wide web is that you can go searching for the definition of something that you mean to be amazingly inspired and come out with a way too descriptive explanation. Medically speaking, a father is "a male whose sperm united with an egg" and "a male whose impregnation of a female results in the birth of a child." I was just one egg that my dad helped to make into an embryo, and I was just a child as a result of impregnation, but I have so many more father's in my life than just the one who medically is my father.

First, I have a Heavenly Father. This is the father that literally watches over me every day of my life and wants the very best for me, because that's what a father does. He does everything He can to make it possible for me to return to live with Him, because He truly is a father and He misses me and all of His other children. Because of my Heavenly Father I am living and have this amazing Gospel in my life that gives me knowledge of Him and the Atonement.

Second, I have my actual father. Whatta stud. My mom always tells me the story of how my dad knew I was going to be a girl before she did, so he was so excited and brought home a case of pink diapers to tell her I was going to be a girl, and since that day he's made sure that I was a daddy's girl. He made it impossible for me not to be. He watched out for me in every single aspect of my life. He gave me the gift of straightening pictures in public places when they're crooked, and the gift of knowing how to make websites. Because of my father I knew the exact type of man I wanted to marry, I had such a great example of a father and because of him I found the man I married, whom he quickly approved of- because, Kelly likes ABBA.

Before I talk about the third father I have in my life I want to tell you a story: Before I got married I was always the girl who said "I want to be married for at least two years before I have a baby. I want to be a wife before I'm a mother. I want to be a mother- but way in the future." Now most of you know that I got pregnant when I was married for less than 6 months.

Because of the third man in my life that I already consider a father: my husband. We were married for about a mother before I decided that I wanted to have a baby really early on in our marriage, because from the second I met Patrick Kelly McBride I saw the potential of an amazing father. Kelly had fulfilled the first "medical" aspect of a father and put a little baby inside of me and we were so excited. I was SO excited to celebrate this Father's Day with him considering him a father, because for a whole this day has been very painful for him. I was so excited to buy him chocolates and different things that you give to dad's. I was going to give him a present from the baby.

Well, we don't have that baby anymore and this Father's Day is super rough all around. Everybody says that the moment a woman gets pregnant she becomes a mother, but I've considered Kelly a father to my baby for a long time. I believe that his potential to be a great father one day should be celebrated today, because I am so grateful that I married a man who is so capable of being everything I've ever wanted for my children.

I love all of the father's in my life so much and I am the person that I am today because each one of them has played a significant part in my life. 

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Into the light of the dark black night

A lot of things happen in our life and we sometimes expect those circumstances and the events that happen to define how we feel and how we act, but it turns out that those have very little to do with our attitude or our happiness/sadness. I had always thought that if I had clear skin, and long blonde hair, and I got married that I would finally be truly happy all the time and with my entire life. Then I got all of those things and guess what, I wasn't happy yet. 

One of the scariest realizations is that we have more impact on our attitude and our moods then we give ourselves credit for. We constantly blame our circumstances for being unhappy, or sad, or just miserable in general, but that is just not a good enough reason because those actually have very little to do with it.

I'm not saying that sad things that happen in our lives shouldn't make us sad. When I had my miscarriage there was no way that in that moment or even a week after I was going to be able to smile really and mean it deep down, but that also can turn around. After my miscarriage I had moments that were really happy- and I appeared really happy temporarily, but I was still miserable. 

"I'll be happy when..."

It's unfortunate because I truly let myself believe that the reason I was sad half of my life was because things weren't working out in my favor. Things were always someone else's fault.

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