Recognizing What’s Right in Front of You

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Have you ever stopped to consider that everything you want may already be right in front of you?

We spend so much time focusing on the details—how something should look, how it should happen, and what form it should take—that we can completely overlook what we already have.

Today was gloomy outside, which always makes me feel a little more creative. I sat down intending to work on one of my books. As I wrote, I began thinking about my life, the relationships I have experienced, and the people who have shaped me along the way.

Somewhere in that reflection, I realized something that should have been obvious to me long ago:

I have spent much of my life wanting to be chosen while overlooking the people who were already choosing me.

The Life I Thought I Was Supposed to Have

For as long as I can remember, I have had a particular picture of family in my mind.

I imagined getting married to someone I loved, having children together, and building the family I always wanted growing up. I pictured big holidays, everyone gathered around the Christmas tree, family dinners, and walks together afterward.

It was never simply about getting married or having a child. Technically, either of those things could happen without providing what I was truly searching for.

What I wanted was for someone to choose me.

I wanted someone to hear what mattered to me and say, “What you want is important to me too.”

Because I was so attached to the complete picture, I often dismissed anything that did not resemble it closely enough. If an opportunity did not include the marriage, the children, the house, and every other detail I had imagined, I assumed it was not what I wanted.

I became very good at walking away from things that did not look exactly right, without stopping to consider what they might still offer.

Family Does Not Always Arrive as Expected

This realization feels especially important because of the work I have done with children in foster care.

I have explained to children that although we may wish every parent could provide the safe and loving home their child deserves, we do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes a child cannot return to the family they were born into.

That does not mean they can never have a family.

Family can also be created through the people who consistently love, protect, guide, and show up for us.

I understand that in my own life. My biological mother was not always the mother I needed, so I have adopted mothers along the way. I have met women who embodied the care, wisdom, or protection I was missing, and I allowed them to become family to me.

Yet somehow, I was able to recognize chosen family in one part of my life while continuing to reject it in another.

I kept insisting that I had not been chosen because I had not been chosen in the exact way I expected.

Fifteen Years of Being Chosen

There is a man I have affectionately referred to as “Boyfriend” for years, although we have never dated. We have never attempted to build a traditional romantic relationship. We simply met by accident, became friends, and continued existing in each other’s lives.

For fifteen years, he has sent me a good-morning message nearly every day.

I know that if I call him and genuinely need something, he will be there. He has watched me endure failed relationships, job losses, heartbreak, major life changes, and some of the darkest periods of my life.

He has remained.

There was even a night when I no longer wanted to remain here myself.

Content note: The following section references a suicide attempt.

During one of the lowest moments of my life, I took more medication than I should have. The people with me were frightened and unsure of how to reach me, so they called him.

He talked to me. He listened as I explained that I felt unwanted, unloved, and convinced that the people in my life would be better without me.

He asked me to save myself, but I refused.

Then he said something different:

“Do it for me.”

And I did.

Recently, I asked him why he believed those words would matter enough to reach me.

He told me that he knew me well enough to understand that it was the one time he could ask me for a favor that big—and that he would not have asked unless he believed it would work.

Even then, I did not fully understand what his presence meant.

I continued moving through my life, searching for someone to choose me, while this person continued doing exactly that.

Love Is Not Always a Marriage Proposal

This reflection is not a declaration that he and I should have married. It is not an announcement that I regret my entire life or do not love my husband.

It is the recognition that love does not exist in only one form.

Being chosen does not always come with a wedding ring. Family is not created exclusively through biology or legal paperwork. Commitment can reveal itself through friendship, consistency, protection, honesty, and the quiet decision to keep showing up.

For years, I looked at what was missing.

There was no proposal. No traditional relationship. No jointly created household that matched the image in my mind.

Because I focused on those missing pieces, I failed to appreciate what was actually being offered: a person who knew me, accepted me, supported me, and continued choosing a place in my life.

The package did not look the way I expected it to look, so I treated what was inside it as though it were not enough.

How Often Do We Do This?

How often do we have something remarkably close to what we need staring us directly in the face, only to reject it because it arrived differently than expected?

How often do we overlook the people who love us because they do not use the words we imagined hearing?

How often do we dismiss chosen family because they are not related to us?

How often do we disregard consistency because we are waiting for a grand gesture?

And how many beautiful possibilities do we miss because we decide the packaging matters more than what it contains?

I have spent years wanting to feel seen, wanted, and chosen. Yet the evidence that I was all three had been present for much of my adult life.

I simply did not recognize it.

Look Again

Perhaps you are reaching for something that always seems just beyond your grasp.

Maybe you want love, family, belonging, safety, acceptance, or someone who genuinely sees you.

I am not suggesting that you settle for less than you deserve or pretend that an unhealthy situation is good enough. I am asking you to look again—carefully and honestly—at what is already present in your life.

Who checks on you?

Who consistently shows up?

Who makes room for your feelings?

Who has loved you without requiring you to perform for it?

Who continues to choose you, even if their love does not carry the title you expected?

Sometimes what we are seeking is not absent.

Sometimes it is simply wearing a form we have not yet learned to recognize.

Today is another page in the story. It does not have to be perfect; it just has to be written.

Before you close your journal tonight, ask yourself:

What love, support, or family might I be overlooking because it did not arrive in the package I expected?

And, as always, what was your bite of pie?

Until tomorrow, love you loud.