Real | A Pendulum World

Oh, it’s been a while since one of these drafts has been published. It’s been a while since I’ve written a couple sentences and felt that they flowed, were natural, and were all complete sentences. Thank you to those who sent me messages to check up on me and see how I was doing. Those words meant so much to me.

Frazzled.

Don’t ask why I thought this was hilarious!

That’s probably the most fitting adjective for me these days. I’ve heard the term “running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off” and I’ve realized that it’s alarmingly accurate.

Life is busy, and I often feel torn between wanting to give more to my son, but feeling empty myself. It’s hard to be taking 3 classes and still being a mom. It makes me think of all those working mom’s, all the single mom’s, and all the mom’s who may not be single, but feel they are going at it alone. I cannot imagine the sheer exhaustion. I have the utmost respect for you. You are incredible.

But, we keep going, right? We realize we’re stronger than we thought, and that our souls can weather storms we hadn’t conceived before. We do our best, at times feeling like a failure and we move forward loving our family the best we know how. Luckily, there is a loving God.

I feel God is very intimately involved in this motherhood journey of ours, whether we have children or not yet. He sees our sorrows and our yearning hearts. He’s near our side in the middle of the nights. He’s stroking our hair when we cry out at night from exhaustion and loneliness. He’s right by our side when we struggle to conceive. He listens intently to our prayers we send up to Him and answers them in His time and way.

A picture I drew in High School that brought peace to my soul.

He’s really there. In my times of deepest sorrow, I often pray for the ability to feel His warm and loving embrace. In those moments I feel the deepest sense of comfort and love just surround me.

He’s really there.

Girls, we got this. We got this crazy, mixed-up, altered plans, hurt hearts, exhilarating life. We got this, because He is really there.

If you are interested in finding more bloggers, I linked some of the blogging women who have inspired me to be stronger and rely on God. Really, they are my friends. If you want some inspiration and a dose of straight-talk, real life, then stop by their blogs to meet them.

In alphabetical order: A Babbling Brooke, Catching Crawfish, Chloe Kepner, Invited by Grace, Light the Lie, MomLife Now, Natalie Brenner, Noelle B. Blogs and Three Boys and a Mom

*ALSO, since life is much busier and it’s harder for me to sit down and blog as often, I would love if you would follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to get more daily updates. 🙂 Thank you for being apart of my life!

We had some family pictures taken recently. Boy, sometimes I have a love/hate relationships with family photos. I love getting a beautiful picture to hang on the wall of the people I love the most. But, I’m not so found of trying to get the outfits to match, trying to look “picture perfect,” as well as try to get Parker to stand still–he wasn’t made to do that! So far, he’s made to run and play, not pose. I don’t blame him.

Here are some of my favorites.

I love these pictures and am excited to hang them up in my new home, but these photos have reminded me that they are simply snapshots. Snapshots that are beautiful, but nevertheless, incapable of capturing my heart, my family, and who we really are.

Although these snapshots are wonderful, they are just that–a snapshot. My real life, it looks like this:

Exercise clothes and a pony tail

Silly not posing

Tantrums on the bathroom floor with no pants on.

Just a good old day at home in t-shirts and big smiles.

We people watch or scan through snapshots of friends and acquaintances often–Facebook and Instagram have made that a piece of cake. However, most of the time we catch just a glimpse into another person’s life, a simple snapshot, that dismisses the behind-the-scenes of their life.

Among other things, their snapshot often highlights how nicely they keep their house, how they seem to be perpetually put together, how their children are so well-behaved, or how strong and alive the romance is in their marriage. After seeing and memorizing their snapshot we can feel little, scattered, and behind the game. At least I feel that at times.

But, in reality, if we settled down in our pajamas with a good bowl of popcorn and watched their life movie–including the behind-the-scenes–we might be surprised. The snapshot was misleading. The snapshot didn’t highlight the days overflowing with challenges, the frazzled days, the days of depression, even the ordinariness of their life.