Setting Boundaries With Sacrifice
On Wednesday of last week, we arrived at our new house. We set up the air mattress, pack-n-play, and unloaded the cars. We had dinner with friends that we had not seen in a few months. And I managed to get some writing in. My mom and brother arrived late that night at a hotel in town to help with the movers.
We prepped the house as much as possible Thursday morning so the movers could quickly bring things in. After an exhausting and freezing couple of hours, the house was full of our furniture and boxes. So far, only one thing is broken, and one thing is missing, and thankfully, they weren't really things we cared about. We started unpacking boxes, doing laundry, and washing dishes. My mom and brother stayed up long after we went to bed, putting things away.
Friday, we ran around town searching for furniture pieces and storage items that we needed to utilize the space in the house in the best way we could. This house is bigger than our last one, which means we need some pieces to fill in the gaps, but it's also organized differently, which means the layout we had prior doesn't work as well. Even though the kitchen is the same size, it has weird-shaped cabinets and shelves that don't fit everything, and we lost one cabinet that stored a lot of our rarely used items. This forced those things into the pantry that weren't there before, making everything feel a little off. We're still working out those kinks now. My mom and brother left around 4:30 to head back home, and I was done.
I didn't get any writing done Friday, and subsequently, no post went up because I was so far past my breaking point. I was exhausted, stressed, and drained with a pounding headache that only a good night's sleep would fix. I could have pushed through and stared at the screen, begging the words to come until I had something halfway decent enough to post, but I didn't. I decided it wasn't worth it to push through this pain for something that I wasn't going to be proud of.
Our dreams demand sacrifice, and sacrifice is always hard. But we do get to set the boundaries on what that sacrifice looks like. We get to decide what is and is not up for debate. There are certain things in our lives that we believe should never be at the mercy of anything else. We get to decide exactly what those are for ourselves. I will not sacrifice my health, sanity, or relationship with my family, no matter how strongly I feel connected to my dream.
What's important to understand about setting these boundaries is that it's not a blanket boundary. Saying I will not sacrifice my relationship with my son doesn't mean I will be at every baseball game. It does mean that I'll be at the championship game or whatever game my son decides is the most important one. Saying I will not sacrifice my relationship with my husband doesn't mean I will be home every time he gets back from or leaves for a TDY. It does mean that when my husband says he misses me, I will do everything in my power to ease that until we can be together again. Saying I will not sacrifice my health doesn't mean I won't go through weeks of sleep deprivation from working long hours. It does mean that I take my medicine and manage my diet as best I can to support my thyroid.
We will have to push through challenging periods. We will have stretches of time where life feels impossible to manage alongside our dreams, but if we look long-term and see a light at the end of the tunnel, we can push through. If the situation is untenable with no end in sight, it is time to reevaluate. That doesn't mean we push our dream out the door, but maybe we change the timeline or circumstances we planned to see it come true. Maybe my book deal comes in five years instead of three. Maybe I turn towards self-publishing rather than the traditional method. Maybe I decide that my dream is completely different at this stage of life and pivot entirely.
We have to have room in our plans for flexibility and grace. I needed space to take Friday off when life had become too much. But that pain quickly disappeared because, despite the house being nowhere near unpacked, I feel like I have room to breathe. It was just a bad day after a string of exhausting and overwhelming days. That wasn't cause to ring the alarm bells that something wasn't working.
There is only so much flexibility and grace that we can provide ourselves, though, before we look in the mirror and recognize that something needs to change. There is something to be said for grinding when we are young. We can push through a lot of hard things and put in long hours when we have more energy and less responsibility. But I have also witnessed a lot of people die in recent years long before anyone would have thought their time was up.
I don't want to miss out on the fun simply because I was banking on the fact that there would be time left over, but I also don't want to deprive myself of great joys purely because I wasn't willing to delay gratification. I don't know what the right answer is. I'm still figuring that out for myself. But I do know that the journey should be fun, and the hard days should never outnumber the joyful ones. If we can find this balance in our lives, I know that we will find so much satisfaction in chasing our dreams, and anything that keeps us in the game increases the odds that we see that dream come true.