You know when someone is first pregnant and everyone seems to ask, “Do you want a boy or a girl?” Well of course, 99% of the time you get the response, “We will be happy either way!”

Well I was not that typical pregnant girl. My response was always, “We’re hoping for a boy!”

I know, it may sound a bit mean when I put is so bluntly and of course we were going to be happy either way, but I was really hoping for a little boy first and then a girl. I had heard so many stories of people trying for years and years, not being able to get pregnant and so, that became such a huge fear of mine. So being blessed with a pregnancy so quickly was truly amazing. But if I had to choose, I would have chosen a boy.

Now here I am today with the most beautiful baby girl in the world. She’s smart, she’s loving, I dress her up in the cutest clothes and we even match from time to time.

And I wouldn’t have my life any other way.

The reason I’m telling this story is because it’s such a great parallel to life. You want a certain job and don’t get it or you want to buy a certain house and someone outbids you. And then, you meet your future spouse at the new job you didn’t want or your new neighbors at the house you didn’t want turn out to be your best friends for years.

You know why? It's because God has a plan. He is directing us down a different path, oftentimes the opposite path we would have chosen for ourselves...in the moment, that is.

Life is rough at times -- very very rough. But I truly believe that we are not given more than we can handle and that down the line, it will get better. It always gets better. It’s unbelievably hard to go through a tough time and think, “There must be something positive coming from this!” I sure can’t do that. But looking back, even a sad, tough, heartbreaking path that leads to so many good things in our lives is always so clear to see.

My husband and I talk about this in regards to his career all the time:

He is in sales so he makes call after call after call and sends email after email after email every single day. Some calls go nowhere and others are great and it's almost like a shot in the dark at times. He never knows who or when the right contact will help him make a sale. He may speak with a COO on the phone who transfers him to the marketing director who then makes the call to buy the software and the deal is closed. Looking back, the path to closing that deal is so easy to see but before that year-long sales process began, there’s no way he would have been able to tell you the path that would lead to that sale.

And that’s how our lives are every single day. We’re blindly following God knowing that with hard work, perseverance and trust in Him, that we will be directed down the right path...of course with lots of hiccups along the way.

It’s so freaking hard to just sit back and let God mold our lives into what He has planned for us. We want to control every living minute we have and we tend to not look very far past the present...at least I don’t.

But God has a plan and I’ve been doing my best to remind myself of that every single day of my life, especially when something doesn’t go as expected -- when something doesn’t go MY WAY.

Every day is another step toward something incredibly beautiful but if we try to control our lives down to the minute and sulk when we don’t get our way, then we’re missing the beauty that is right before our eyes. Let’s embrace our trials and put our trust in God. Because with that, I’m sure life is a whole lot sweeter and a whole lot more beautiful.

Moral of the story: Have faith, trust God with all of your heart and all of your soul and dig deep to find the beauty in every situation you find yourself in. It's there -- we just have to look for it.

Photography by Briana Lindsey Photography