After Tuesday's tough "pushed off the edge of my mom sanity ledge" experience, I met with a friend of mine. I was near tears and sick to my stomach and warned her of my emotions and how crazy they were at that moment. She asked what was wrong and I openly shared the bad and the ugly (because, my friends, there was no good), and felt like a terrible mom admitting my shortcomings, my failures. It felt good to share and yet shameful to admit.
Little did I know how much my words were needed.
My dear friend had struggled with similar feelings just the evening before. Feelings of utter failure and wanting to give up on this whole "mom" thing.
Seriously, exactly what I was feeling.
(And this is where the ashes turned into something beautiful):
And when I had opened up first and admitted my shortcomings, suddenly she wasn't alone! (I'll tell you what is worse than being a failure: being a failure and thinking you are the only one. I've been in that very lonely place on more than one occasion for different reasons.)
People! Friends! Folks I love and care about! You are not alone in your struggles! We are ALL tripping over hurdles, left and right. We are imperfect people, striving for perfection because that's the standard that the world tends to put in front of our faces (smack dab in front of us every day, a hundred times a day through social media) and we will never achieve it. (P.S. This is not God's expectation of us.) The truth is that every one of those perfectly beautiful people has a skeleton or two in their closet. Something they will never in a million years admit to you.
I've got my own closet full.
You're not alone.
And it doesn't end there, friends. I won't wallow and I also won't allow myself to stop trying simply because it's too hard and after all: everybody else is floundering and why should we keep trying because there's no hope at all?! *sob!*
No, we are moms because we are strong. We will pick up the pieces and we will try again because we always have and we always will. And we will know that behind us we have an entire team of moms supporting us with their advice and their empathy. "The Mom Team!" (Okay, we're going to have to work on that name because that is way too high on the Cheesy Scale...)
(I know the past few posts have been about moms because, well, that's pretty much where I'm at right now, but those of you who can see beyond that "mom" thing will get this message too - ❤️)
So here's the good I leave you with: take hope. Grab it, hold onto it, claim it as your very own!! Hope because even at our very worst, He has still got it all in His hands and He can still make the bad and the ugly into something good.
His beauty from our ashes.
KC
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