What if this is as good as it gets?

What if this is as good as it gets?

This question came to me last Tuesday morning as I watched my toddler move and stack furniture in our bathroom so she could see herself in the mirror while brushing her teeth.

As you can imagine, the process was loud and clumsy and at that moment I was just trying to breathe my way through this little person's need for independence. I had a dishwasher to unpack, work to do, a house to clean and I was just trying to get through the moment without losing my patience, reminding myself that things wouldn’t always be this chaotic.

 And then suddenly - bam! My brain hit me with this, “what if it always feels this chaotic?” 

“What if this is as good as it gets?”

And it is a good question. What if this feeling of waiting for it to get better, never goes away? What if I always feel like I need to move on to the next thing? 

There were reasons for my impatience -  I needed to get to my work so that we could have a little extra at the end of the month, I was dying to tackle my housework so that tonight when she went to bed I could do more of said work, I had a More Than Pretty order that was being collected the next day and needed to be packaged and and and…

I felt as though I was chasing my tail. I had felt like this for a while, even more so since I started working again.

But what if this WAS as good as it gets? Could this be enough for me? What if my bank account always had just enough and no more, and my house was never all clean all at once? What if More Than Pretty never grows into what I dream it to be and stays the little project that it is?

As these thoughts race through my brain, I look over at my determined little human who was now at the very top of this furniture tower she had built, with a beaming smile - and in that moment I realise that  - of course it is. How did I ever convince myself it was not?

As with everything these days - my mind very quickly finds itself thinking of all the last moments we have witnessed over the last year and how Palestinians would give anything to live in my chaos - the joy and comfort my life would bring, just to watch their children build furniture towers and to have enough to feed them.

There is that word that they always say, “alhamdulillah” which translates to “praise be to God” or “Thank God”. We hear it almost every time a Palestinian crosses our screen and we hear it in the face of the most horrific scenes.

There is a lesson in what we are witnessing, for all of humanity, and it brings us back to what we already know - gratitude is the best way we find peace in this life. And if we’re paying attention we may also see that gratitude can long outlast any material possession we have if we let it.

So ask yourself - “what if this is as good as it gets?” is it enough? And what do I need to change to make it so?

Most times you may find that the only thing that needs to change is your perspective.

I have “More Than” enough.

"Alhamdulillah"