Something I Wish I Was Better At

I believe there are and will always be traits/quirks about myself that I could improve.  As a human I will never be perfect.  John always tells me there is beauty in imperfection, which of course I appreciate :)  The best way I can live is to acknowledge that I will never be perfect and continue to improve myself to be the best I can be.  For this post I chose two different aspects of my life that I wish I was better at...      

1.  I wish I was better at expressing my feelings.  I have gotten better since I got married, but I am still pretty bad at it.  Growing up we weren't encouraged to be outwardly emotional, so I became (at least thought I did) excellent at bottling everything up.  I assumed I had to look like I had it all together, for my siblings, my parents, my friends, the town.  Not surprisingly, all the emotions I bottled up exploded and that's when I fell into depression. At that point though I still didn't know how to express myself and continued to hide what I was feeling.  John was the first person to encourage me to tell him what I was feeling.  When he asked me how I was doing, he wouldn't take the response "fine" because he knew that was my cop-out.  He seems to always know when I'm feeling sad or mad or overwhelmed and continues to ask me what's up until I let him in.  With that said I still struggle immensely with sharing my feelings with my family, especially my dad.  I was just talking to John the other day about how I wish I could tell my dad about how sorry I am for what I put them through when I was depressed.  I think I hesitate because I feel it would put both my dad and me in an awkward position.  I cherish the relationship we have now even if it isn't what I truly wish we had, so I would hate to jeopardize that.  I hope one day that I have the courage to be vulnerable with my dad.          

2.  I wish I was better at balancing my time.  I stink at it and I have always known it.  Recently I've been starting to see the toll being busy has on me and my marriage.  As we have begun discussing starting a family I'm really starting to realize how much time I spend on others and how much less time I'll have for John and I when there's a baby in the picture.  Now by no means do I mean that I wish I only spent time on myself.  I love spending time with others and serving others, but I think I need to start finding a healthy balance.  As the summer approaches there will be activities that will be coming to a close, so my plan is to be continually be aware of where I commit my time and remember that time spent not doing anything can be productive.