Today we’re diving into this question: What happens when life doesn’t look the way we planned it and what do we do with what we have? And if you don’t take anything else away from today’s episode, here’s what I want you to remember. that it doesn’t matter what life could have looked like. We have to be able to let go of what we think our life should be and embrace what is, but if we do it just might leave.To something better than we ever could have imagined. So let’s dive into the show.

Too often, we get stuck in this idea of focusing on what we can’t do rather than focusing on what we can do. We give up, we settle for what is, and yet we still feel stuck and a little bit. The question that we’re afraid to ask is what happens when the life we end up living doesn’t look like the life we had planned.

It doesn’t matter what life could have looked [00:02:00] like. We have to be able to let go of what we think our life should be and embrace what is, but if we do it just might lead us to something better than we ever could have imagined. A life of impact a life that matters a life we love is possible, but it starts with embracing what is.

So maybe you reached this place where life doesn’t look the way that you thought it did and you’ve settled for what is you’ve thought to yourself? Hey, I just can’t have a life that I love. I can’t pursue my dreams. I want to talk about why this is the wrong approach. You see, each of us has something to offer our lives matter.

We each have a story worth sharing and we have the power to turn our lives into significant stories. If we can begin to see our difficulties as opportunities, the truth is that so often we don’t live lives of purpose because we’re not intentionally seeking it. And if we would intentionally live and pursue purpose, you’ll be amazed at what could happen.

The starting point for building a life you love. Is believing that you are called to something greater than yourself, your life matters. And what makes life extraordinary is not the chances we get. But what we do with what we’ve been given. Sometimes we look at someone who’s experienced success and we think that can never be me because we are stuck looking through the lens of what we want life to be.

If we can let go of that and embrace what is, if we can shift our beliefs and our mindset. A [00:04:00]world of opportunity awaits you. And I can choose to live a life of the impact to build a life that matters and ultimately create a life we love. And it starts with embracing what is, and this journey is going to look different for each of us.

Sometimes we like to compare our journey to someone else’s and they’re different, but there are common themes that emerge through everyone’s. And so I think the best thing is to talk about stories, stories of ordinary people who have chosen to embrace this fact who have chosen to say, I’m going to let go of what was and embrace what is so that I can pursue a life of purpose and impact.

So today I’m going to start by sharing my story with you because it’s not. An amazing story. It’s not something that I’ve accomplished something great. I’m just an ordinary person, just like you. And this is my story of how I became what I call an accidental stay at home mom and how I learned to navigate that season and what I learned and how I grew into who I am today and who I’m becoming for the future.

So let’s dig in and let me share my story with you. And my hope is in that sharing this, that you will understand more about yourself, your potential and the calling that lives inside of you. So in my early twenties, I had grand plans of building a career in marketing and advertising. And I, I knew I wanted to build something that maps.

I wanted to own my own business and have a quote unquote, successful career. I was fuzzy on the details of how this was going to come together, [00:06:00] but I knew two things. One, I didn’t really have a desire to be pregnant, but I was okay with the idea of adoption. And I knew I did not want to marry someone in the military.

Because I had this idea that marrying someone in the military is going to mess up my career aspiration. I literally lived in the same city from birth until age 18, but I wasn’t completely unaware of what military life entailed. I had two grandfathers and three uncles who served in the air force and I spent my entire life hearing stories from my grandmother, from my dad, from my cousins about the military lifestyle.

And I was convinced that this lifestyle was not for me. And honestly, my biggest fear was that I would marry someone and then get stationed in the middle of nowhere. And I wouldn’t be able to do the things that mattered to me. But then I met my husband and he was charming and funny and ambitious, and he loved volunteering as much as I did.

And on an intellectual level, we hit it off immediately, but there was one problem. He was in the military. Well, six months later, I finally agreed to go on a date with him. I told myself that one date couldn’t hurt, but then one day turned into several dates and that turned into a relationship. And still, I wasn’t convinced that we were meant to be together.

Because the military after dating for about 10 months, he headed off on his first deployment. I basically told him, I wasn’t sure we would make it through the deployment. Not something you want to hear your girlfriend say, right. All it took was that one deployment for me to know that I did not want to spend my life without him.

So we started planning our wedding. As soon as you returned now, fast [00:08:00] forward two years, he calls me one afternoon at work and tells me that he has orders to move to a base in the middle of nowhere. My biggest fear had actually come true. And I left work that day in tears. A few weeks later, we said goodbye to our first home together.

I’m moped for awhile, particularly because it was next to impossible to get a job unless you were bilingual. I was. So then I took matters into my own hands and long story short, I opened a coffee shop. That’s another story for another day. A few years later, we moved again, only this time in the moving process.

I found out I was pregnant. I found a job soon after we moved. And thankfully the company granted me an official leave without pay after baby girl. Number one was born. And then a year later, another job opportunity landed in my lap and I took the leap. And then a few months later I found out I was expecting again, it was right around this time that I started to question my life and my career path and quick succession, we found out we were pregnant again.

We would have to move out of our current rental house and that my husband was deploying yet. Again. And in the season of trying to unpack in a new rental house, single parent, a toddler work full time and deal with the exhaustion of pregnancy. This is when I started to realize that I could not do it all and that trying to do it all was leaving me without any margin to do the things that mattered to me or really live life.

I felt like I was. Simply existing and trying to make it through each day, rather than building a life that I loved, this lifestyle was not sustainable. And [00:10:00] so I started searching for what I really wanted out of life and what was really possible given that. That I’m a military spouse. So in the last episode, I shared more about this search for meaning and how I realized that life wasn’t about what I accomplished.

It was rather who I was at a person as a person and how I want it to show up, but it wasn’t ready to let go of my career yet. So I went to my boss and asked to try something different. I asked. If I could work from home. I wanted more time to invest in my family and in the community. And surprisingly, my boss said yes.

And so after my second daughter was born, I scaled back my hours and started working part-time from home. Well, a few months later it was time to move again. And this time I couldn’t line up reliable childcare. So I pivoted again. And I worked out a deal to continue doing project work for my company as an independent contractor.

I was trying to juggle two toddlers, military life in a new city and working from home. And that was still a lot. I ended up deciding, okay, this isn’t working either, and I’m going to take a break from working for a few months. And I knew we were going to be moving again in the summer. Our plan was for me to start rebuilding my career after our move.

So we got our orders, found a house we love and surprise a positive pregnancy test with baby girl. Number three. So suddenly I went from trying to find a job that would cover the cost of two kids in daycare to needing one that would give me unofficial maternity leave flexibility to pump at work and pay enough [00:12:00] for me to afford daycare for three kids.

And I wasn’t super excited about another hour-long commute to work every day. So after exploring the job options in the area, I determined it wasn’t worth it. And for the first time ever, I was officially a stay-at-home mom definitely was not in my career plan. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure I was cut out for the stay at home mom lifestyle.

I was struggling to find myself in a new community, help my kids get acclimated. I desperately missed adult interaction and using my brain for more than answering why questions for my three-year-old. I hated the thought of spending every day, the same cooking, cleaning, changing diapers, breaking up fights on repeat.

And really for the first time in my life, I felt like I had completely lost myself. I went in search of something to provide me some sanity. How do stay at home moms do this. And the first thing I found was a podcast for stay-at-home moms. And I tried listening to it and I just walked away frustrated.

The basic advice in the podcast was on the hard days to just remember, this is what you always wanted. This wasn’t what I always wanted. This is just where I found myself. Now, if you’ve always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, I think that’s absolutely wonderful, but that had never been a part of my plan.

And yet here I was, and I was unemployed in a new state. Pregnant chasing two toddlers around this time. And I was letting my husband feel the brunt of my frustrations. I felt completely [00:14:00]inadequate at pretty much everything. I struggled with who I was and what I had to offer. Who was I outside of a military spouse.

And. Was there more. I had basically given myself to taking care of the home and that family and had completely lost sight of what things made me come alive that gave me rest. That just really made me become who I was meant to be. I questioned whether I just needed to accept the fact that my dreams were never going to happen.

I knew something needed to change that there was. Something that wasn’t right, because I felt completely depleted. I was trying to pour from an empty cup. I was trying to be the spouse and mom and friend, and I had nothing left to give. So. I started this journey to find myself and I prayed and I journaled and I read, I listened to podcasts.

I thought about all the things that brought me joy and what I enjoyed doing outside of identity as a marketing strategist or as a spouse or as a mom. And you know what, as I started to work on my. I slowly became more content with the season of life I was in. And as I became more content, life got better for everyone.

When I look back at this season, I learned a ton about myself and the things that light me up. I began to put these thoughts and dreams down on paper, and I would love to tell you that then I started following those dreams and that you [00:16:00] can really just see a huge shift in my life at that moment, but that’s not what happened.

What really happened. I was about to have baby number three. And as soon as she was. My husband started a new position at work where he worked a lot of long hours. And shortly after that, I actually started working from home part-time again, before long I realized I was back in that cycle of overwhelm, there was too much on my plate and I could not show up as this.

The mom, the friend that I needed to be and serve in the way that I needed to serve, because life had gotten out of balance again. And I realized this is not the sustainable life of joy that I want. So I made a plan to get back on track. And then COVID happened and the world’s most intense OCONUS PCS in the middle of a pandemic and an anxiety attack and a painful bout of shingles.

All of this made me in some ways feel stuck and like, it was impossible to move forward. But there was a difference this time because I had already been doing the work of figuring out who I am and who I’m supposed to be. I had a compass to help me get back on track. The big difference in this season and in past season.

Was that now I had goals and objectives to keep moving towards. And as I chose to keep moving forward and keep searching and pursuing that life of impact, I started to see changes happen. [00:18:00] I kept making daily decisions to move towards the person that I knew. I wanted to be, I think so often we think that living a life of impact and purpose comes through these visible leaps of faith.

We see people making a difference doing these bold steps, but what we don’t see is the years and years of preparation leading to that moment. Let me know, life of impact is much more about how we show up each and every day and the daily actions that we take that move us closer towards the person we want to be.

Then it is about a big leap of faith. I am still deep into life as a military spouse and a mom of young kids. I’m still growing. I’m still learning and I’m still dreaming, but I can tell you that today I have a much deeper understanding of the life that I want to live a life that I truly believe will lead to greater impact.

I have so much more clarity about who I am meant to be and what I am meant to do then I did two or four years ago. I feel so much more, better equipped to help others on this path. It’s not about a one-time moment of clarity or a leap, big leap of faith. It’s not a pretty journey that has a bow tied on the.

It’s a messy and real journey. A marathon, not a sprint. There are good days and there are bad days, but I can tell you that I feel like I am right where I am supposed to be in the [00:20:00] season. And that’s a good feeling. I started this podcast because of what. Through and because I believe it’s the best way to shine a light on this journey that we are taking as military spouses and the opportunity we have to turn our obstacles into opportunities, the journey we have to let go of what might have been to embrace.

What is. In our life to find and pursue our purpose and chase the dreams that are on our heart to build a life that we love a life that prioritizes what matters most, that brings us joy that simplifies and gives us less overwhelmed. And most importantly uses what we’ve been given as individuals to impact the world.

For good. So here’s a few truths that I believe you can take from my journey and apply it to your life. The first thing is that deep down inside all of us are searching for a purpose for meaning, for a reason to get out of bed in the morning, finding our purpose begins with a mindset. Then the mindset of, and letting go of what I thought I wanted, what life could have been, I’m embracing what is I’m going to make the most of every day and every opportunity going forth.

It’s a mindset that believes that everyone has something valuable to offer that we each have something that the world needs and that we all miss out. When we keep that thing locked up inside of us, finding our [00:22:00] purpose and living the life that we were meant to live starts with becoming who we are meant to be.

It’s a season of an awareness. We don’t start until we’re ready and we’re not ready until we’re willing to sacrifice what might’ve been for. What. This season, this journey, it’s a season that’s full of messy middles. It’s the hard work that starts by working on us. It doesn’t happen overnight and it’s not necessarily easy.

It involves learning to care for ourselves and fill our cups so that we can bring life. To those we care most deeply about it’s the daily practices of finding joy and the mundane of being present in the moment. It’s letting go of the myth that this purpose is something that we just stumble on that happens in an instant or makes a big splash.

It’s understanding that this is a series of intentional decisions and small steps in a forward motion over a long period of time. But if we will take this journey, if we will. Sacrifice our temporary comfort. We will find a life of purpose of joy at an impact that it will lead us to a life that we love.

It’s a life that’s possible if we’re willing to start the journey. So if you have felt stuck in your life, if you have struggled with where you are at and what your life currently looks like, know that you don’t have to stay. It’s time to [00:24:00] reclaim your life and dreams. It’s time to discover who you are meant to be because together we can change the world.

Now, before you go, I want to remind you that the Milspouse mastermind community is a free Facebook group for military spouses. It’s. Being there for each other in our message journeys. It’s about being honest about our struggles. It’s about helping each other find intentionality in our day to day lives.

If you have not gone over there, please do so you can find the link in the show notes below this episode, or you can find a link on our website. Milspousemastermind.com. Just remember we have to let go of what we think we want and embrace what is, but when we do it just might lead us to something better than we could’ve ever imagined.

My prayer for you today is that you lean into these truths that you embrace. The life that you’re living and that you see that your life matters and that there is so much opportunity for you to make a difference in the world. Your story matters. And I encourage you to start embracing this truth and start following these beliefs today until next time may you live filled, fueled, and full of joy.