When You Feel Hopeless in Your Marriage

Before I got married, I would often hear the phrase “marriage is hard work”. It was always said as a cautionary statement to those of us unmarried people to prepare for the difficulty that lay ahead. Whenever I heard people say this, I always assumed what they meant by the statement is that marriage is hard work because it is hard to continue to prioritize one another throughout life.

Now, I know the truth.

I have been married for 16 years and through the years, I have not only had my own experiences with marital disappointment, but I have had a front-row seat as I have walked with many women through theirs.

So, I’m here to tell you that “yes, marriage is hard work”, but it’s more than that.

Marriage is confusing work.

Marriage is defeating work.

Marriage can even be heartbreaking work.

When we get married, we believe we have picked someone who would always be there for us, would always be safe for us, and would always be honest with us. Sure, we know life is stressful and marriage is hard. But we also know who we married. We believe that while life is hard certain things won’t change.

We know them.

We can trust them.

However, through the years things can become different.

One day, we can wake up and be living in a struggling marriage. We remember people telling us how hard it would be and while what we are experiencing is difficult, “hard” doesn’t feel like the word that best describes it. A better word would be defeating.

Marriage can be defeating.

Many women find themselves in marriages with men they don’t even recognize.

Men who have lied to them (and continue to do so).

Men who are no longer willing to do the work it takes.

Men who are having sex with other women.

Men who aren’t honest about how they are spending their time or their money.

You see, when us women hear that “marriage is hard” we think that we can handle it because we are strong, capable women who are willing to do the work. But it isn’t that simple.

Sometimes, it isn’t “work” that needs to be done, but betrayal that has to be dealt with.

Because surprisingly, marriage is filled with betrayal. Both kinds, Blindside Betrayal and Lifestyle Betrayal. Blindside betrayal is when we have no idea something is going on and one day everything comes crashing down and our world is upside down. Lifestyle betrayal is much less dramatic but no less defeating. It is a lifestyle of small betrayals where the man we married is no longer the safe, supportive, sincere person we thought we had beside us.

So while marriage is hard, yes, and it takes a lot of work, yes. It is so much more than “hard work”.

Many women are faced with the very real reality that their marriage has become so utterly disappointing and they are beyond exhausted from the work they have put into it.

It’s not that they are no longer willing to do “the work” it is that they have done the “work” and don’t know what else to do. What else can be done?

If you are reading this and feel defeated in your marriage, I want to encourage you that there is hope. There is hope for you to move forward through this deep experience of betrayal.

You need to be encouraged and you need a plan. Good thing. I have both for you.

I am hosting a FREE, 40 minute Masterclass that covers HOW and WHY betrayal happens. This class covers all types of betrayal, but is perfect for anyone who feels disappointed by their husband!

Mastering the Art of Letting Dreams Die

I am passionate about dreaming in this life. I love happy endings and dreams fulfilled. However, there is a very real part of this life that involves learning to allow dreams to come to an end.

Sometimes our dreams die a slow peaceful death and sometimes they come crashing down without any warning they would be gone so soon.

When we are young, the sky can feel like the limit. We don't doubt what our life will bring to us because we are confident that our dreams will come to pass and things will go as planned.

And sometimes they do.

However, as we get older and our dreams become reality, we often realize how much disappointment comes along with our dreams. Life seldom goes exactly as we planned. At times, we find ourselves grabbing for scraps of our dreams that have been left over from our reality.

And then there are the times that our dreams are taken from us completely.

No scraps left to gather. No dream left at all.

Nothing left to manage.

I am a firm believer in redemption, but sometimes there is nothing left to redeem. Sometimes the dream is simply gone.

What then?

How do we move forward in life?

Here are the steps I take when it is time to let a dream die…

1. Acknowledge it is gone.

The first step is to acknowledge what has happened. Look at the situation and define it for what it is. See the loss and allow yourself to acknowledge the new experience you have to live.

Sometimes this is easy and sometimes this is the hardest part of it all.

2. Let it go.

Depending on the loss, this step alone can take some time. Losing something and letting go of it are actually two different steps. The loss comes first, often times, without our consent. Letting go is our participation in the loss. Letting go is our choice to say we are making a new way in our life without our dream.

3. Grieve it.

It's ok and GOOD to acknowledge the loss and allow yourself to feel the pain.

It is important to identify it and talk to someone about it. Even if it sounds silly or you don't think it will help, be sure to find someone you can discuss your loss with.

4. Find hope.

Depending on the depth of your loss, this could take some time. However, at some point, it is essential to discover hope again. Not hope that the dream will return, but hope for a new dream.

5. Decide how you will view your fear.

I have found that once I have chosen to hope again, I am always faced with fear quickly after.  Fear of losing my new dream and fear of having to walk the journey of loss once again.

Fear will tell us he is our protector and our friend, but he is not. His true intention is to keep us limited in our life and keep our dreams small.

You and you alone will define how fear directs your future.

Dreaming is a beautiful part of our life. Losing the dream is not so beautiful, but it is necessary to understand that once we have lost a dream we must walk the steps to grieve our loss.

If we don't, we may experience something worse than our lost dream... A life of no dreaming at all.

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I Am Dedicated to Dying Without Bitterness

I have a lot of goals in this life. One of my goals is to die without bitterness.

Maybe you think this is a silly goal, but as I have gotten older, it is becoming more and more apparent how difficult this is going to be.

There are so many disappointing things that happen in this life.

As a child many of us believed that the sky was the limit. We looked at adulthood with longing, because we thought it would be filled with freedom. It seemed clear that our adult life would be the place that all of our dreams would magically come true.

We couldn’t wait to grow up.

However, as we enter into adulthood our hopes can quickly be met with a harsh dose of reality.

Adult life can feel quite monotonous and disappointing.

Our timeline for things like promotions, marriage or children is often different than we hoped. Our career can feel suffocating or stagnant. The money doesn’t always pour in like we expected. Married life is not always the honeymoon we thought it would be and parenting can often be more exhausting than we imagined.

Friendships can be difficult to maintain through the years. Unfortunately, some of our relationships become lost altogether.

And then there are the seasons of life that utterly break our heart and almost break us completely.

It is easy to become cynical.

Without even realizing it, our disappointment can lead us to embrace bitterness. Not all at once, but a little bit at a time.

The way I see it, I have two options:

to own my bitterness or refuse it.

To be clear, I know that bitterness comes with many benefits.

When I am hurt, I can use bitterness as an “off” switch. It allows me to hold onto my expectations and resent the way that things turned out. I can then move forward without processing my disappointment, grieving or forgiving anyone.

Bitterness can be quite comforting when I don’t want to walk through the healing process.

Becoming bitter can happen quite naturally, but it comes at a high cost.

Yes, it gives me a free pass not to heal, but it also keeps me stuck in the pain of my experience. My disappointments will forever have a hold on me until I choose to process them.

I am dedicated to living a life without bitterness.

The way I see it, it is a priority for me to master being disappointed. Not because I enjoy disappointment, but because I want to live free.

Freedom.

The freedom I sought as a child is the very thing I am longing to protect.

My freedom to dream.

My freedom to hope.

The freedom to be me genuinely and not hardened by life.

I will not take responsibility for everything that happens to me in my life, I will take full responsibility for what I do with it.

Bitterness is not for me, that is for sure.

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Five Things to Do When Your Life Is In the Dumps

Take it from a person who has quite literally had most of her stuff in a dumpster. Life can hand us a crappy hand every now and then.

Sometimes we look around and think, how did I get here? But most importantly, how do I get out of here?? Here are a few tips that I have learned for when life hands us lemons:

1.     Be disappointed.

Cry. It is ok to be disappointed. Grieve the things that you have lost. Grieve your expectations. Grieve your plans. Let it out.

It is so important to allow yourself time to be disappointed, but it is just as important not to stay here longer than necessary. 

2.     Connect.

Reach out. Find your peeps. Cling close to the people who help support you, distance yourself from the people who stress you out.

When you reach out to your friends be sure to be real with them. Be vulnerable. Tell them the truth of how you feel, even if you know it sounds crazy. Listen to what they have to say.

When we talk to other people, it allows us to hear a different perspective, which is vital when our own perspective is clouded.

I hope that you have at least two people that you can talk openly to about all the ups and downs of the past, and just as importantly, the steps to move forward.

3.      Disconnect.

When life brings struggle, take a break from Social Media. Social Media can be great, but when our lives feel like they are at rock bottom it can certainly cause us some unnecessary anxiety.

If you need a distraction from your situation, meet up with a friend, pick up an inspiring book, cook or create something, or even watch a your favorite movie.

For heaven’s sake, do not sit down and relish other people’s “amazing” lives. Talk about salt in an open wound.

Disconnect from things that are not beneficial to you, but not from your friends and family that are vital to move forward.

4.      Reflect.

It is important to look over your journey. What led you to this point? What choices did you make that could have prevented this? Not from a place of shame or fear, but from a place of humility and learning to grow from your experience.

Some situations cannot be avoided, but it is still important to take a step back and evaluate your circumstance.

5.      Look ahead.

Who are you now? Who do you want to be in the future? No matter what our circumstances are, we have the ability to grow into the person we want to be.

We must be sure that we do not compromise our long term goals and hopes for this momentary setback.

I hate bad days; however, there are so many beautiful things to experience when we are going through a struggle. 

We cannot control our circumstances, but we must take ownership of our journey. 

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Ruining My Life... One Expectation at a Time

Hopes. Dreams. Expectations. Plans. Goals. Desires.

They are all wonderfully beautiful things... until they aren’t.

There is an art to having expectations. The trick is to find the sweet spot. Right where they push you forward, but don’t hold you back.

I have always been a very positive person and I have never been short on hopes for my future. These hopes turned into plans and then I would then execute those plans. As I did, I expected everything to go exactly according to my very sunny expectations.

Expectations.

Such a simple word with a whole lot of implication.

I realized something interesting about my expectations… well… that they were ruining my life.

I guess to be fair it wasn’t actually my expectations that were stealing from me, it was my inability to let go of them. I mean seriously, I would clinch those things in my hands until there was no life left in them at all.  I didn’t want to let go.

I would hold on to them like some crazy lunatic who just could not get the message that things were not going to play out like she thought.

My expectations have affected every part of my life, but have probably affected my relationship with Carter the most. They almost functioned as a third person in our relationship. 

I let my expectations call the shots far too often. I would ruin an entire experience because it went differently than I expected it to. It was so stinkin’ silly.

When things didn’t fall in line, I was not ok with it. I felt entitled to my expectations. I felt as if I was owed them. I wanted things to go perfectly, but when they didn’t, I couldn’t find a new “perfect”. I would waste so much time thinking about what “should have been”.

I was missing out on so many things because they were turning out different than I expected.

We should expect wonderful things in this life; however, we should not stop moving forward when things happen that are not expected. It isn’t easy, that’s for sure. But I want to be very clear about something that I discovered along the way.

My life was not the problem.

My husband was not the problem.

My problem was my inability to understand that this life is not lived out according to a pre-written script.

This life is organic and alive. This life is full of twists and turns more beautiful and gut-wrenching than anything that we can possibly imagine.

It is not so much our plans that will indicate what kind of life we have, but the ability to adapt to the change of plans that will define our life.

My sweet friends, aim yourself to the moon, but when you find your experiences falling short of what you hoped, don’t forget to enjoy the stars.

(Yes, that just happened. I referenced the "shoot for the moon" saying. Classic.)

Much love and many blessings, Haley

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Living the Dream, One Nightmare at a Time

If you would’ve asked me when we got married what our lives would look like in a decade I would’ve said something like this…

I saw Carter and I married with a handful of kiddos, both through pregnancy and adoption.

We would be living outside of a small town, with a bit of land and owning a pet or two.

We would have travelled the world.

 I would be staying at home with my kids, possibly working a day or two outside the home. I thought Carter would be working in the finance world and I hoped that he would enjoy his job.

Of course, I planned on being more in love with my husband than ever.

You want to hear something crazy?

 Every single one of the things that I hoped for my life is my reality.

However...

Even though so many wonderful things have happened, I can honestly say that in the past decade there have been so many things that I did not expect to be part of our journey.

I never expected to come home one day and find that someone had broken into our home. Stealing several thousands of dollars’ worth of memories.

I never expected to wake up one morning and realize my house was quickly becoming an island. We had minutes to get out of our house. One car already totaled from the water.

I never expected our house to catch on fire.

I never realized how many days would be dedicated to the broken appliances and a car that needs to go to the shop.

I never anticipated our dog getting hit by the car and the kitties running away.

I never expected Carter to lose his job after the recession hit.

I sure never saw the friendships that would be no longer.

I never expected to take it so brutally hard when we had our failed adoption.

I didn’t expect the whole parenting thing to be so challenging. I never expected so many tears to come with it, both from my children and myself.

I didn’t realize how many different seasons you experience as a married couple. The moments where you look into each other’s eyes and question one another’s actions, intentions or love. I never thought that I would have days where I really questioned the whole gig.

I never realized that there would not just be hard days… but there would be hard years.

You see, when I looked ahead at my life I saw all the moments of the mountaintops. I didn’t see the valleys.

I saw all of my dreams coming true… but I never realized that the same life that would make my dreams come true would be the very life that brought forth my nightmares.

My friends, life is both extremely wonderful and extremely difficult. We have moments on the mountaintops and moments on the valleys. I don’t think we need to fear the valleys, but I do think we need to understand that they will be part of our journey to the top.

If you find yourself in a valley today. Keep your head up. Try to find beauty right where you are. Where you are today, is not where you will always be, but where you are today is part of the journey to where you are going.

And that my friend, is a beautiful thing.

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Dealing with Discouragement

Seriously, I have to do this again? I have to be here… again? I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be disappointed. I want to move on. I want to not care. But I do. I do care.

I am tired of feeling disappointed in this life.

I am tired of resenting my hope.

It is easy to resent hope because it is only after hope that I find myself disappointed. And shortly after disappointment comes discouragement. But I hate discouragement more than I hate disappointment. I hate being discouraged. I hate being overwhelmed.

I am a handler. I like to handle things, not to be handled by them.

I like to have strength, knowledge, and wisdom to deal with every obstacle that comes my way. I like to have a plan to proceed forward with finding success. And I enjoy having my to-do list that I can check off my small victories.

I like victories.

I don’t like to feel like I am losing. I don’t like to feel like I am falling behind. Isn’t it so easy to feel like we are falling behind? In a moment we can be hit with the revelation that we are lagging. We should be farther. We should be more. We should be better.

I hate these moments.

I hate the moments that tell me I should be more than I am.

That my life should be more than it is.

I hate the seconds of my life that discouragement tells me how to feel… and I listen. I hate it. I don’t want to listen to my discouragement, but at times it feels like the only voice I can hear. I try to quiet the voice and speak firm to my discouragement. Sometimes it happens so subtly that I fail to realize what is even happening. I fail to realize who I am listening to.

You see, discouragement tries to get me to sit down and stop. Discouragement tells me that I will never catch up and that in the end, I will lose anyway.

Discouragement tells me to quit.

I was telling Carter the other day that it is funny because I wouldn’t call myself a quitter; (I actually can’t think of anything at the moment that I have actually quit) however, I think about quitting things a lot.

One example of this is when I thought about starting a blog for years. Finally, last June I began to force myself to take action toward my goal. Funny enough, I “quit” my blog about six times before I even launched it. Haha! Carter would come home and I would tell him about the new thing that I was trying to learn, but I was pretty sure it was too hard and I needed to just quit. I would give myself a week or two and then get back at it to try again. It didn’t happen overnight, but six months later I launched myself a blog!

Even now, I will call Carter and tell him that I need to work on a blog post, but have come to the realization that I have nothing to say and don’t know why I have a blog. I give myself a moment… or a day and then I get back at it. Suddenly, I have something to say again and I wonder how I could have ever felt voiceless.

Truth is, quitting is not my style. It just doesn’t feel right to me. I guess I like breaks.

I am all about taking a break when things get tough.

Let’s not discount the very necessary experience of rest. Rest is perfect. If you are discouraged today, step back, breathe and rest.

Give yourself rest, but don’t quit.

Funny enough, discouragement often comes right before our greatest breakthroughs! Let’s not listen to the voice that tells us to quit because that voice cannot be trusted!

Let’s keep our heads up. We can do this!

-Haley

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That Awkward Moment When... You Have a Breakdown at Walmart

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The High Cost of Hope

Why couldn’t it just have gone as planned? It was all supposed to be so simple. So straightforward. I’m so disappointed that things haven’t gone as smooth as I hoped they would.

Why must it be so damn hard?

I don’t understand.

I weep today over the obstacles of life. I weep over the deep disappointment of the dream that is still a dream.

I am continually amazed at how much this life can hurt. The depth of disappointment that we can experience is surprisingly deep. Long roads that seem to have no end are beyond discouraging.

I am here. Broken.

I am here because I dreamed. I am here because I believed. I am here because I hoped.

What do I do now?

Do I run?

Do I hide?

Do I try to find a way to never be here again?

No.

I absolutely will not run from my heartache. I will not hide from my pain. I will stand here. I will be still. I will face it. I will challenge it.

I will soak in my pain, embrace my brokenness and I will do something that feels like a very stupid thing to do right now.

I will hope.

I will hope even though my hope has cost me in the past. I will hope even though I have no guarantees. I will hope because I refuse to be a person who lives without hope. I will hope because I believe in redemption. I will hope because I believe that hope is one of the most powerful forces in this world.

Hope is a rare commodity that many people come to believe is too costly to possess.

This world has a way of betraying us, but I will hope still. I will cry. I will scream. I will curse.

But I will stand.

And I will hope.

I don't think we will ever fully understand the role that disappointment has in our lives. The path we expected and the path that we have lived are far from the same. The amount of pain that this world brings to our doorstep can seem unfair. At times, it feels like we are being run over by our disappointment.

Disappointments are tough, but I will not allow my disappointment to control my future. I will march on, with more passion than ever and I will not fear the risk to hope.

Because to live a life without hope is to live no life at all.

Fear tells me that my hope is too costly to possess, but I will challenge my fears. I will have the final say.

Watch me.

Even when my outstanding dreams seem more than I can bear, I will press forward, forging a way to a new place. I will not look back. I will embrace where I am, but fully expect to be somewhere new soon.

I will stand here until my disappointment turns into one of the most precious commodities in the world.

I will stay in this place until my disappointment turns to hope.

And when I am once again armed with hope. I will be ready and expecting to bring change to this world. Because through the eyes of my hope, I can see not what is, but what could be.

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