Good morning, beautiful ☀️✨
I am home, fall is starting to make her little entrance, and it is almost time for me to put away my summer lemon dishes. And normally, this would just be one of those yummy little seasonal things I love to do. I LOVE changing my dishes with the seasons. I love creating little moments in my home that make an ordinary Tuesday feel special just because I decided it should. But this year, putting away my lemon dishes feels a little different because there was something I wanted to do with them that I never got a chance to do. I had planned this cozy little lemon gathering with my girlfriends. Food, conversation, laughter, my cute dishes on the table, all the things. And then life happened. I unexpectedly needed to go to Los Angeles to help care for my mom, and my little lemon gathering never happened.
And let me tell you something: I was not happy about that. LOL. I think sometimes when we make a choice for someone we love, especially when we know it is absolutely the choice we want to make, we think we aren’t allowed to also be disappointed about what that choice costs us. But I was. I wanted my gathering. I wanted to sit around my home with my girlfriends. I wanted to use those dishes. I wanted the experience I had imagined. AND I wanted to be with my mom. Both things were true. I didn’t have to make one desire less important in order for the other choice to be right.
But somewhere in those two weeks, I realized how incredibly grateful I was for something I probably would have overlooked years ago: I had a choice. When life changed, I could change with it. I could look at what mattered to me in that moment and decide where I wanted to be. I could go to Los Angeles. I could take my mom to appointments, cook her meals, make sure she took her medicine, sit with her and simply be her daughter for a while. Not because my own life didn’t matter. Actually, I think I could make that choice so freely because I finally understand that my life DOES matter. I wasn’t abandoning it. I was choosing how I wanted to live it.
And maybe that’s what I am learning about disappointment too. Everything we don’t get to do isn’t necessarily lost. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen the way we pictured it. The summer gathering didn’t happen. Okay. The lemon dishes can go back into the cabinet. Fall dishes can come out. Maybe there will be pumpkins instead of lemons. Maybe the menu will change. Maybe my girlfriends will sit around the same room in sweaters instead of sundresses. LOL. The details can change without the desire disappearing. Joy can be rescheduled. I don’t have to grip the original plan so tightly that I miss the opportunity to create something beautiful from what is available now.
I wonder how many times we have convinced ourselves that there are only two choices: get what we wanted or be okay with not having it. Maybe there is another choice. Maybe we can be disappointed. Maybe we can acknowledge that something mattered to us. Maybe we can choose something else that matters more in that particular moment. And then, when the season changes, we can come back to ourselves and ask, Okay beautiful, what do you want now? Not as a consolation prize. Not as some watered-down replacement for what didn’t happen. But as a brand-new choice made by the person you are today.
So yes, I am going to pack away my lemon dishes without ever having the gathering I imagined for them this summer. And surprisingly, that doesn’t make me sad the way I thought it might. Those little yellow dishes have somehow become a reminder that a beautiful life isn’t a life where nothing interrupts your plans. It’s a life where you have enough freedom to choose what matters when the plans change. I chose my mom. I am so freaking grateful that I could. And now I get to come home, pull out my fall dishes, call my girlfriends, and create something else beautiful. Because the lemons had their season, and goodness… there is still so much life left to enjoy.
Your most magical self,
Treshelle
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