While I was sitting around the fire last night, I was thinking about why I was disappointed about not being able to go to my nephew’s baby shower this weekend. I came up with three reasons I had wanted to:
1. I wanted to see all the hard work my wife put in and to see all the decorations that she created for this labor of love to her nephew. To see her vision realized.
2. I wanted to support my wife. I love her and know this is very important to her, so I really wanted to go to support her.
3. I wanted to support my kids, causes they love to visit Grammy and hang out with cousins.
But as soon as all these things came to mind, three other things also came to mind:
1. I will be able to see all the pictures that she’s going to take and that’s going to let me see her vision realized.
2. She knows I was willing to travel 3.5 hours each way, with all the kids, over a weekend, sacrificing my weekend for her.
3. None of the kids really wanted to go.
So I would have been giving up my weekend and wearing myself out to give others what I thought they wanted. To meet the expectations of the family I would be visiting, that we would be there.
In the end, I will be much more able to support her and the kids this coming week since I made the decision just to stay home and have a low-key weekend. I can do anything in life that I want, but I can’t do everything. This time, I made the right decision to stay home.