Because I love Kacy

I've been reading this blog Every Day I Write the Book pretty much since I started blogging.  (Four years, FYI.)  Kacy is real and funny and insightful, and also a Harry Potter fan.  What's not to like?

Some of my favorite posts of hers are here, here and here, if you're interested. I might love her newest post most of all, even though it's a book review about a book I haven't read and, in all honesty, probably won't.  I just love how she says things:

I'm sick of people being their true self.  It's always people being their "true selves" who act like jerks and leave their wives. Who's to say who your true self is? Isn't acting better similar to being better?

To which I say, amen, and that I sometimes wish our society would quit with the whole "be yourself" business. (Sorry, I HAD to put that link in there.)  So many people think that life is about "finding themselves" and seeing the world and loving recklessly and collecting degrees and following their dreams .... rather than doing what's right, being grateful for what they have and, I don't know, doing the things that will bring them true happiness.

I was talking about this with my good friend Dani last week and I've thought about it often.  I just feel bad for people who don't want their own families, who don't ever want to be "tied down" or tethered by true commitment.  They think they're better off without it.  But they will never experience the joy, the love, the incredible growth and progression that comes from having a family.  To me, that's the whole point of life.

Again, Kacy says it perfectly:

Isn't it within a marriage and within a family that we become better people? I've started to think lately that the church stresses family not just as an eternal organizational unit but as the means to salvation--not just by being in one, but through surviving it. I'm noticing that many people's greatest trials come through their families and I am noticing that any improvement I have made personally has been through being in a family and serving when I don't feel like it. For me it has come through being forced to be selfless in serving my kids, but I can see that marriage could act as a refining fire as well. I've seen men be better through thoughtful consideration of their demanding wives or through making sacrifices by working at jobs they hate to support people they love.

I really think that's true.  I have long believed that we learn what we need to learn most from our families, and that in many cases there is no other way to learn it.

So .... now I'm going to go take a nap.  It's been one of those Sundays.