Adulting is Hard

  These past couple of weeks, months heck even years have thrown me. They have probably been some of the hardest times I have experienced in my life. Loosing both parents, having two beautiful but very strong willed children. I am not going to lie and say it has been easy or that it is starting to get easier. Its not.
   Whats harder, than dealing with life and its plain hardness is the fact that we are surrounded by constant judgement. People feeling like they know exactly how your should live your life, what your doing right, what your doing wrong or what things need to look life for you. This right here, is really hard to step away from. To offer grace and not be hurt by it. And its funny, in a not so funny sense, we are all struggling with something and yet we all do it. We sit back from the stands and offer our judgements to the other person about how they could do better or what they are doing wrong. We all walk around feeling like we silently have to perform to look and act a certain way instead of being ourselves. 
   Sometimes we make decisions about our lives that we have the best of intentions with. We think "this is the best choice".... and hindsight is twenty twenty when we realize that it probably wasn't and that whole sucky ass adulting has to come in and suck it up and fix it. It plain sucks. The decisions we make as adults and the consequences that come with them are so much harder. When my dad was dying there were so many times where I was "too busy" to go up there, and yes I had my life my work, school, pregnancy yada yada and at that point I thought this was the best choice. That there was more time... and I look back and wish I would of taken advantage of that time more. I learned a lesson from this because I let my fear during that time control my actions. 
  We recently got a dog, two weeks ago. We thought that this would be a great fit for our family. We did a lot of research about what we wanted and how much time and energy this would take, this wasn't our first rodeo. We had three dogs at once a while back so we felt like this was the best choice for us.... and after integrating her into our home we realized that this was not going to be a good fit. That is an awful feeling folks. It really is, to step back from a decision you felt was wise and admit that it probably wasn't. That you can't give this dog everything that they need and it plain sucks. And there will be people sitting on the sidelines shaking their head and judging our actions, and I am going to have to accept the fact that some people will choose to look at us in a negative light about this instead of extending grace. 
 

Carry on Mama's

     I started reading this book "Carry on Warrior" by Glennon Doyle Melton and I feel like she is writing what is in my head. I love her raw honestly and ability to lay it all out there. She makes me feel like I am not alone. Yesterday a specific page spoke to me:

     SO MANY times I have mentioned something to someone or posted something on FB about how overwhelming being a mom, a wife, a full time employee is and get the response to "just be positive" or "enjoy these moments, they pass so quickly". Although I know the intentions and meanings behind these phrases are pure and kind, and frankly I think they are just taught in our society, they make me feel guilty and mad. Like something is wrong with me because I don't enjoy every moment. I really don't. There are moments where I want to rip my hair out, run away and don't want to be around my kids, and I work full time, so I can imagine what this looks like to all you amazing mamas who work from home or stay home. Kudos, truly because that is HARD stuff and it is often not supported. IT IS HARD, and if we keep pretending that it isn't what are we creating? What are we really telling mamas in our society? Just because we are frustrated or overwhelmed it doesn't mean we aren't thankful. I am incredibly thankful for my family, but they infuriate me at times.
 If we can start living in a community where we speak how we feel instead of being afraid of being judged, because lets be honest here... people are going to judge you no matter what you say; we start to create an environment where we are lifting each other up and encouraging each other instead of isolating. As you have probably noticed from my FB posts I am pretty honest about how I feel and I and learning that there is nothing to be ashamed about there. I am thankful for my friends and family that let me be honest without judgment and meet me where I am. Won't you join me?

Fear is....

Fear is easy. In fact fear, is something that comes quite naturally to me. I automatically go to the worst possible scenario in my head in whatever situation I am in. I spend a good amount of time playing out 'what ifs' and trying to figure out what I would do if.... its truly such a waste of time. If fear, weren't so easy then I don't think the bible would have mentioned it over and over again."do not be afraid". We are consistently reminded of that because fear is easy. Satan thrives on this. He loves it. He loves to see us afraid.
    Today was a scary day for us. We live in an increasingly scary world that is hard to ignore. I don't watch the news and try to steer clear from articles because, for me it ends up being all I think about. This whole FEAR thing is really hard to ignore when it comes knocking on your front door, and today it did. We found out that Kalebs school went into lock down today and there was an active shooter in the neighborhood. I have been in lock downs before in elementary schools and Kaleb in fact had one earlier this year, this one felt different. Don't get me wrong... I trust his school, he is very safe there but in my mind, my kids aren't SAFE unless they are with me. I instantly got really scared and all those "what if" thoughts started flooding my mind. It pissed me off that we have to live in a world where it is scary for our kids to go to school, play in the park, go outside. There is risk...more so every day. 
  I can choose to sit there and live in that fear... the kind that will paralyze you or I can choose to lift this up to our papa, knowing that he has this. That although my fear might not be unwarranted that I/we are protected by the father. That every time I give into it and let it take a hold of me, I am letting Satan delight in that. So here I am lifting it up over and over again because NOT being afraid is something that doesn't come very easily to me.