I’ve been thinking about my approach to life lately. I am a planner. I am a someday-er. I am a person who frets about getting all of her ducks in a row for tomorrow, forgets the old cliche about the present being a gift, and replaces that embrace life optimism with neurotic worrying.

Now, I am getting better about this. I think that after life happens long enough you learn exactly how little control you have over circumstances. You make the best choices you can with the resources that you have available and you exercise hope and faith in a loving Higher Power that it will all work out to benefit you somehow. Learning to let go is important. I am loosening my white knuckled grip.

I have been trying really hard to focus on enjoying the process that life is, rather than enjoying the outcome. Spending nine months saying, “when the baby arrives, I’ll be happy” or “when my husband returns from deployment things will be good” is a grand way to waste several months that could have been filled with adventure and appreciation and beautiful experiences. Now is pretty good, and we cheapen it when we ignore it. Now can be a time filled with gratitude- even if your now is completely awful, and you wish it would just pass already, there are so many tiny miracles that can be recognized.

I have spent the past several weeks with a heightened awareness and appreciation of the hand of God in my life. It has made hard things seem like blessings, and helped me to look at situations and ask myself how I can make the very best come out of things. I have often looked at a challenge, and rather than seeing something that might make me feel down or overwhelmed, I’ve asked myself, “how can I embrace the joy in this moment? What can I do to make right now more fun or more productive or more happy?”

Christmas was one of those times for me. It was hard to do the holidays without my husband. Not only was it our first Christmas apart, but it was also the first Christmas with no plans with extended family. The burden of holiday merriment, cooking, cleaning, Santa magic, and everything else fell to me, and I’m sure most of you are well aware that it can really feel like a burden and not like a joyous celebration of the Savior’s birth. Sometimes the sadness that comes from missing special people around the holidays is a little too much, and I admit that on Christmas I got a very short, timed phone call from my husband and then hung up and burst into tears. I just wanted him home and I wanted Christmas to be perfect. Blubber, blubber, pregnant hormone soup, and boo-hoo some more.

The funny thing is, we had a great Christmas. Because I was overwhelmed, I got a little choosy about what I did and didn’t do, and I tried to focus on just the things that would make the kids happy. They are 6 and 4. They do not care that I didn’t spend hours making all of the traditional Norwegian dishes that I was craving. They didn’t even notice that I went for nearly a week without sweeping underneath the dining room table, and if they did, they didn’t judge me harshly for it. They really, really loved eating our big Christmas Eve dinner by candle light and drinking Martinelli’s from stemware like grown up, fancy people. They will recall that Mom sat them down before bed and read the story of the Savior’s birth because it was important to her. They were overjoyed at the sight of the tree and the presents. There were many typical Christmas things that simply didn’t happen this year, but the only thing they missed was their Dad, and that was totally beyond my control. I really think that despite my limitations and expectations, we made the very most of Christmas, and we really did have joy in the moment.

We did make this goofy little gingerbread house. Normally, I would have gone all out and created it from scratch, but I was out of energy and when I saw a pre-made box promising lots of candy and easy assembly with perfect results, I went for it. Lots of candy turned out to be the understatement of the year. Easy would have involved frosting that didn’t run like Elmer’s glue. Perfect? Oh not even close.

I was getting irritated. Jonas was frustrated that the gumdrops were sliding right off the roof. But Maggie wasn’t. Maggie was completely enjoying the experience. She loved the colors of the gumdrops, the taste of the frosting, the silliness of the drips, and her excitement made me quickly see that this was not something going wrong. This was something that wasn’t as I expected, but something that could be embraced and enjoyed.

I want to spend more time in this coming year loving what I’m doing. I want to be less worried about someday, and more enthusiastic about the moment. Perhaps the Air Force will move us and we’ll have to leave this big, beautiful house we finally got into. I want to embrace a move and expect good things and good people where ever we end up. Perhaps this baby will be just like his brother and refuse to sleep and think I’m a human pacifier. I want to accept the tiredness and enjoy the fact that I am holding a tiny, beautiful miracle and stroke his eyebrows and cheeks even when he screams and then appreciate it even more when he sleeps. Perhaps my husband will come home, only to turn right back around and start another deployment. I want to be able to say we loved having him home, we made the very most of it, and we are still learning and growing and doing the best we can with what we have right now.

I want to be a little more optimistic and have a little more hope. It isn’t a natural emotion for me- I naturally expect bad things and feel that emergency preparedness planning is extremely wise. Even when things go right, I look at the situation and ask why and what is around the corner that will make this bad. I was told that Chris will be home early from this deployment, and while I was thrilled, a big part of me panicked and asked, “What does this mean? Does this mean something bad is going to happen with the baby or our family and we are going to NEED him home early?” I know, I’m neurotic. But sometimes life feels like even when something goes right, it goes wrong. I find myself expecting bad things more often than not, and worrying myself sick over them. It is not a good approach to life, but an understandable one.

This coming year, I want to keep my attitude focused on embracing the moment and finding the joy in it. That is my goal: to live a little happier, a little more hopeful, and a little more enthusiastically.