a lesson learned

"For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self denial, anxiety and discouragement."

- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

I just read this quote tonight as I was finishing up the novel. I love it. I hate to compare myself and my life to others', and actually I think I do fairly well at avoiding it, but sometimes I slip. I like to see my friends' pictures and to read their blogs - especially the ones at home with little kids. Sometimes I wonder where my personal ambitions have got me. I am so pleased with where I am in life, but looking at the lives of my friends that I grew up right alongside with it's as if I can see through a looking glass. Sometimes I have viewed my choices as trade-offs, but I think that is wrong. I often wondered if a person could really "have it all" and my conclusion is that you can. But maybe not all at once. And why should I want it all at once anyway? How could I ever attempt to appreciate each individual blessing appropriately? Patience. And hope. Faith for the future with sheer determination to never settle for less. My life is much richer than I had planned for myself so long ago. And so these long days I spend in class and at work, the weekends and late nights that I spend studying, are not in vain at the expense of greater joys, but they are my present leading to an incomprehensibly beautiful future.