front yard/back yard

Let me start by saying I love this wonderful man I married more than I ever thought was possible. And one of the reasons I love him most is the way he can lovingly but truthfully set me straight when I'm thinking wrong. Last night was a perfect example. I'd just gotten home from a long-awaited girls night with another Midwestern wife and was telling him all about it. When I got to the part where she'd said, "I wish you'd been here the whole 4 years with us - we would've had so much fun together!" I teared up telling Nathan, because if things had gone differently in 2009, maybe I would've been here the whole time. I would've felt alone during the first year when all he did was study...worried over his first year boards...cheered him on as he conquered second year labs...laughed with him as he worked on his first patients in third year clinic. Instead I got here just in time for fourth year, and the other wives call me lucky for missing all the hard stuff. I have a job that, while I don't particularly like it most of the time, brings in more than enough income to cover our living expenses, have a healthy savings, go on adventures most other dental/medical couples can only afford by dipping into their student loans, and avoid having one penny more of debt than needed to pay his tuition. I have the best memories of my MBA and the lifelong friends I made during it. I really don't have it so bad. But my problem is looking at the other wives here, and my friends and in-laws, and only seeing what I don't have. I see girls married at 19, 20, 22, 24, who have 2 or 3 or 4 babies by the time they reach my age. I see endless pictures of their chubby baby faces on Facebook and Instagram and I spend my Sundays chasing their (cute but potentially crazy and always exhausting) toddlers around in nursery and all I see is what I don't have. I wonder if by the time I have my own babies I'll even have the energy to be a soccer mom, practice tumbling together, read and color and paint and bake with together. I'm a little sad that Nathan and I don't know what it's like to live on student loans and food stamps and wonder if we'll have enough to make it this month but figure it out together because that's what young married couples do. I see Pinterest boards full of perfect clothes and the workouts to get perfect bodies to wear the clothes (does anyone actually do all those workouts they pin? Because it's all I can do to take an hour away from my office and get to the gym every day or two. And even though we can definitely afford it I just can't justify all that shopping anymore). As all these thoughts tumbled out, Nathan asked me why I kept comparing my back yard with everyone else's social media perfect front yards. Of course everyone else looks perfect. Why would you put anything less than a perfect face out on blogs, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and whatever other venue I'm not hip enough to follow? I guess I forgot that my backyard with its tangled up weeds and patchy lawn, isn't visible to anyone else, and even if it was, everyone else is so busy pulling their own weeds they don't have time to look at mine. Maybe it's time for a social media fast to remember to count my own blessings and stop wishing for someone else's, because for all I know their backyard is just as weedy as mine.