Time Doesn't Heal All wounds

This life is many things and fair isn’t one of them. There will always be tragedies that make no sense and losses that our brain is unable to reconcile.

When God designed the earth, loss wasn’t supposed to be a part of her story, but now we must endure the pain of it. There are moments that are hurtful, but then there are moments filled with the scenes of our worst nightmares.

Some moments are made up of only despair.

Heartbroken doesn’t even seem to describe it, as if the pain only affected one part of us. More accurately, we feel we have been ripped in two from our head to our toes. We don’t know how, but our very being feels unattached from itself.

When everything seems gray and we walk around like zombies feeling numb and empty inside. Even though we are sure we will feel joy again, it is hard to imagine how that’s possible.

When the first few moments of every day are spent waking up and once again realizing We are living in our worst nightmare.

Truth is, time doesn’t heal all wounds.

Saying time heals all wounds implies, given enough time, we will eventually return to who we were before. In some cases, this just isn’t possible. Sometimes, life betrays us in such a way the person we were before no longer exists. The event brought such devastation it seemed to alter our very DNA. Even with time, effort, and counseling, the experience will forever have its Impact.

from thIs point forward, our life will be known as “the before” and “the after”.

Of course, time changes the pain, but that doesn’t stop the waves of loss & heartache from taking us under whenever they please. Something was stolen from our life and it will forever have its impact on us. No amount of good things or time will ever make up for it.

There is nothing left to do but wait. Wait and see what our life will become. Not with joy, but with trust. Trust that God can heal us. Not to what we were, but to something new. Something we’ve never been before. Clinging tight to the truth that we have not been forsaken and their is redemption to be found somewhere in this darkness.

The journey ahead is long, but there is hope that one day we will be healed. not because time has passed, but because God has worked.

Am I Enough?

How many times in life have I felt like I wasn’t enough?

A lot.

I have often encountered feelings of inadequacies. Whether it was work, friendships, marriage, mothering, house tasks, or any other thing I have done in my life. I have fallen short. It’s easy to wonder if I am enough.

Am I a good enough mom?

Am I a good enough wife?

Am I good enough to write this?

Simply, Am I good enough?

Through the years, I have learned these fears must be addressed. When I hear the taunts, “You are not enough” or “You should be more than you are”. I now have an answer…

”You’re right.
I am not enough.”

(Didn’t see that coming, did ya?)

Truth is, I used to hate when I thought I had failed because I knew the answer, I had. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to be a failure, so I would try to justify it, blame someone, or avoid it altogether.

Now I know, I must make room for failure in my life. Failure is a part of me. Inadequacy is a part of me. I am unable to be perfect at all times because I am far from it.

I seem to pendulum between a confident capable person and an INCOMPETENT idiot.

I had to stop and accept the truth, sometimes, I wasn’t enough. Sometimes, I would be the major screw up I feared that I was. Sometimes, I would screw up at work. Sometimes, I would fail at motherhood. Sometimes, I would suck at being a wife. Sometimes, I would be a bad friend.

I had been expecting myself to be some kind of robot that would perform at peak performance at all times. Constantly, knowing the expectations of every human being around me. Never letting anyone down, including myself.

I had to stop expecting perfection from myself and I had to accept others would not always approve of me.

This was WAY harder than it sounds for me to learn. I experienced a lot of anxiety as I accepted my life as a failure but I’m so glad I continued to learn the truth.

It’s ok if I am not enough for everyone all the time, i will do my best and offer grace for my failures.

and that’s enough for me.

The Worst Part about Love

I have always been a people person. I like friends. I like family. I can think of no better way to spend my life than investing in the people around me.

I love people.

I love the opportunity to experience new things. Laugh together. Cry together. Support one another. Cheer on one another. People. Love. Relationships. I love it all.

However, it is all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

And people get hurt A LOT.

Have you ever been hurt by someone? (Insert sarcasm.) Of course, YOU HAVE! From the time we were young, we were getting hurt by people. Friends, family, peers on the playground, there are an endless amount of opportunities to get hurt in this life.

We all have people in our life that have disappointed us. Not just the acquaintance we work with, but people close to us. Times when we found out something hurtful a friend said about us or when we needed support but failed to receive it.

I have some of the most amazing friends and family a girl could ask for, but that doesn’t mean my relationships come with no cost. There are so many opportunities for misunderstandings.

I believe this is something that should be talked about more. Don’t get me wrong, I am not cynical, but I do consider myself very practical.

Sometimes misunderstandings happen that seem completely innocent and then there are times when the pain seems deliberate. These experiences make us second guess having people in our life at all.

This is when the rubber meets the road and love can seem like one horrible idea.

We have done ourselves a disservice because we don’t have a good understanding of what love is or the power that it beholds. Somewhere along the way, we have told ourselves that if we love big, then we will be loved big.

Truth is, if we Love big, we will Hurt big.

So many of us expect our love to be returned to us at the measure it is given. Love is not given to the measure it is received. Love is given to the measure of capacity.

I can love big, but not because I have people in my life who don’t make mistakes, but because I have worked for years on growing my capacity to love.

Love isn’t about receiving what you give.

Love is about giving all that you have.

Love is about stretching you to become a beautiful person, no matter if someone else chooses to do the same.

Why Doesn't God Care?

There I was with a long list of prayer requests, praying to a God who didn’t seem to be listening. I had made it very clear the things I needed him to do for me and they were all really good things. I couldn’t understand why He wouldn’t work in my life.

Did He not care?

Of course, I had problems before this, but this was the first time I felt overwhelmingly surrounded by negative circumstances and could not see a way out.

During this time, I found myself getting back into my pajamas in the middle of the day, crawling into bed and crying, as I prayed to a God who seemed determined to stay silent.

I was full of anxiety and was deeply discouraged.

Until…

One day, I was reading my Bible and came across a scripture in Romans that stopped me in my tracks.

And changed everything.

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.”

Wait.

These words hit me like a ton of bricks.

My present sufferings are somehow connected to my glory? But how? How in the world is suffering needed for glory? Isn’t suffering the opposite of glory?

The next sentence blew me away…

“For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.”

What in the world??

I was shocked to read suffering had any connection to glory and now this scripture was saying somehow creation itself was invested in this process? Creation was waiting… for me? What did all of this mean? I didn’t know, but I was determined to dive in deeper.

I realized I needed to figure out what the connection was between suffering and glory because this made no sense to me.

I decided I was all in.

“Luckily”, I found myself in a season of suffering and decided to use this time to learn. I dedicated myself and I promised to give it all the time it took. (Spoiler alert: It took years.)

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t trying to get out of my pain. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t looking to blame someone for my circumstances. For the first time in my life, I chose to be still in the darkness.

This process of discovery took me years to go through. There was no magic that made my life all come together. Many of my circumstances stayed the same and the things I prayed continually went unanswered. I experienced so much anxiety and exhaustion. I often felt like I was being squeezed and could hardly breathe.

I didn’t feel strong because I wasn’t. I was more weak and broken than I had ever been in my entire life.

And it was there, in my brokenness, I found my strength.

It was only in my suffering that I came face to face with my greatest fears and I was presented with my worst nightmares.

It was then that I finally saw myself for who I really was.

I learned I had been living with a deep need to feel in control of my life and keep things in order. I began to understand I had a lot of fear about my life not going how I expected it to go.

I never realized until this how much anxiety I had about my relationships.

I discovered I was leaning on my husband too much to give me confidence. I uncovered I had a fear of making a wrong financial decision and hurting my family. I realized I was afraid I was going to fail my friends and they would leave me. I recognized I loved to judge people who disappointed or hurt me and blame them for any of my unkind actions. I came to the realization that I had a deep fear of being misunderstood which was keeping me limited. I learned I was afraid I was going to make a mistake in raising my kids. Actually, I was afraid to make any mistakes at all.

I knew I was not perfect but to be honest I had no idea I was this broken. I had never seen these things within myself because I had never let myself see them.

It was very difficult to realize I wasn't the person I thought I was.

Before this, I was so determined to be the “best me” I had never learned to stop and look in the mirror to see the person I actually was. I kept thinking I simply needed to try harder so all of the bad parts of myself would go away.

When I first read those words they made no sense to me, now it seems so clear. It was only when I stopped avoiding from my problems I realized how helpful they could be for me.

Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid suffering and praying our way out of hard things.

We have no idea that this lifestyle is keeping us from becoming the great person we always hoped we would be. We only see our problems as a hinderance to our life, not the key to life itself.

many Of us feel betrayed by God because he won’t remove our suffering. I wonder if God ever feels betrayed by us because we won’t choose to Heal and become the person he created us to be.

After almost a decade on this journey, I am convinced, God wants us to be free. More than anything he wants to heal us, equip us, and launch us into our destiny. Unfortunately, we are obsessed with how we feel and our healing involves a lot of pain.

Creation is waiting for a group of people who have stood the test of their suffering and have risen out of the ashes stronger than before.

This group of people is no longer driven by their fears because they have faced them in the darkness. These people are no longer seeking to feel important because they know they are. These people are no longer slaves to their emotions and often choose to do things they don’t feel like doing. They are no longer looking to get out of hard situations because they know great things will come from it.

They know their God hasn’t betrayed them because He is the one who healed them.

You see, our suffering is not the problem, our suffering holds the keys to the solution. We must not run from it, we must experience it so we can heal.

Creation is waiting for you to be revealed.

Are you coming?

The Place Where Healing Resides

Healing has been a theme of my life for many years now. I have learned so much about the process and the journey it truly takes to experience freedom in our life.

I am now convinced we miss out on so many moments to heal because we don't understand the cost and uncomfortable experience healing entails.

We have embraced the lie that healing looks like reading a good book or making a new habit.

That's not true. Those things are great and they can certainly lead to growth, but healing itself consists of facing our brokenness and finding the courage to own it as our responsibility.

Healing occurs when we start recognizing and owning our imperfections.

It involves us going into the darkest parts of ourselves with a small light and seeking answers to why we react the way we do, why we feel what we feel, and believe what we believe. It means no longer taking the “free pass” of blaming our frustrations, anger, bitterness, fear, and other emotions on everyone else.

As much as I hate to say this, the key to our healing is actually found in our failures, brokenness, and shortcomings. Which, unfortunately, most of us spend our lives trying to avoid.

We believe it is important not to make mistakes, so we spend more time trying to prove we don’t make them at all than learning why we do.

We all fall short. We all fail. We all get it wrong sometimes.

All of us.

Don't avoid your failure. Face it. Seek to understand who you are... Really.

And when you do find yourself in a situation of failure try this instead...

Let it Simmer.

Accept the failure.

Do not run from it. Don't act on your emotions. Do not pretend it isn't happening.

Be still.

See it. Own it.

Acknowledge your vulnerability. Share your failure with someone in your life.

Choose to find worth in yourself even though you failed, not despite it.

Embrace the process.

Choose to trust.

Seek truth, not validation. Seek to understand why you did what you did and why it seemed like the best choice at the time.

This is not about proving you didn't fail. This is about understanding why you did and understanding that it’s ok.

You are not perfect and you will never be.

Rest in grace.

This experience feels bad, but it is not bad. It is uncomfortable and necessary.

This is the place healing resides.

This is where you find redemption.

Don't run from this. Rest in it.

It is not bad to fail. It is not a bad thing to be vulnerable. This, in fact, is the very thing that makes you human.

Your redemption is not found in your perfection, but in how you handle your imperfection.

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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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Are You Measuring Up?

“Haley, I don’t think you see yourself very clearly,” a friend said to me.

I had just uttered a self-evaluation of my physical appearance. It wasn’t a particularly encouraging or positive utterance. This wasn’t the first time she told me she didn’t think I saw myself accurately.

She is the type of friend who will tell me when I am wrong but has always encouraged me in who I am.

This time her observation stuck with me.

Did I see myself clearly?

And if not, why?

I began to think back on times that I have struggled with who I am.

Whether it was something I was doing or the way I appeared. I have often felt negative about myself and been hard on myself for feeling like I should be more than I am.

At times, it felt so obvious that I was falling short of “the standard”.

What standard, you ask? I don’t even know. The unspoken standard of who I should be. The one that I have pressured on myself and the one that I have felt pressured by the world.

Why is it so hard to feel content with who we are and the choices we make?

Life is filled with a lot of intricate experiences that complicate our perception of who we are. We learn from a young age who we are “supposed” to be and the life we “should” live. We spend much of our early years learning rules and expectations to function in society. (Some of us embrace these expectations more than others.) We also learn quickly that if we perform “well” we get more praise and acceptance than when we fail.

We are taught a standard for social acceptance and these guidelines are easy to become our standard for self-acceptance.

It is easy to feel that when others accept us that means we are “good”, but when people disapprove of us than we are “bad”. Sadly, this is a very unreliable measuring tool of our value because everyone has such varying perceptions.

It is quite easy to lose ourselves while we try to meet everyone’s expectations.

It seems clear to me that most of us have inaccurate views of ourselves. We are often our own worst critic and spend too much time thinking about our failures. We hold on to the worst things that people have said to us and forget to remember the best.

For years, I have been on a journey of learning to live in grace for myself and release the expectations of how I thought everything would turn out… including myself.

I am learning how to look at my flaws and say, “Yep, that is not the most attractive feature I have, but that’s alright.”

I am not looking to create a mindset that says I am perfect.

I am looking to create a mindset that knows I am not perfect, but I am perfectly ok with it.

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Do You Feel Alone?

Do you feel alone? It is so easy to feel alone in this world. We can be in the middle of a crowded room, yet still feel alone. We may have hundreds or even thousands of “friends” and “followers”, yet feel completely isolated. We can talk with people, work with people, and live with people, yet no one knows what we are going through.

Why do so many people feel alone right now? Why do people feel so much anxiety, fear, and depression? Why are we so isolated? We have more ways to connect than ever before so how are we more disconnected than any other time in history?

I have had years of my life that I felt very isolated. There was so much going on within me that no one knew about.

I never intended to keep so much of myself a secret, it just happened

Most of the time, I felt great. I felt like a normal, connected person. A person that wasn’t alone until I would hit a struggle zone.

Maybe something had happened and it triggered anxiety. Maybe nothing had happened, but I felt anxious none the less.

I lived a life surrounded with people, but at times, felt completely alone.

The people in my life didn’t know the struggles I was going through because I was too afraid to tell them I was struggling. I hid it until it went away. It always went away… eventually.

I had learned to just wait it out.

I knew that if I opened up to someone, I might get rejected. They might say that what I felt was stupid or wrong. They might think I was a failure.

I didn’t want to be a failure. I liked to be a success.

I liked when people talked to me and saw that I had my shit together. And to be honest, most of the time, I did. But then sometimes, I felt so broken. I felt so discouraged. I felt so lost. And because I hadn’t ever told anyone about that part of myself, I felt so alone.

I am thankful to tell you that I haven’t felt alone for years.

Sincerely.

Don’t get me wrong, I have felt stressed, sad, anxious, and discouraged, but I don’t feel alone anymore. How is that possible?

Simple, I started letting people in.

Not people on my social media, real-life people.

I started to talk to my husband, I started being honest with my mom, I started sharing real life with my sisters, and I started being open with my friends.

Simply put, I started being honest and vulnerable.

When I was doing well, I was doing well. But when I wasn’t, I wasn’t.

I no longer just said, “I’m fine” whenever people asked and I no longer waited for them to ask.

I didn’t open up to everyone, just my people. The people that God had given me to find healing with.

To this day, when I am not doing well my people know. I will reach out to my husband if he doesn’t answer, my mom. If she can’t talk, my sister. If she is busy, a friend.

I do not joke around because I have found the amazing power of connection.

When I am struggling my people encourage me. They speak truth to me when all I can hear are the lies. They remind me who I am when I can’t seem to remember. They give me a direction when I feel lost.

My people pray for me. My people catch me when I fall. My people remind me that failing is ok. They encourage me when I am discouraged. They remind me that I have value even when I don’t perform well. They give me grace in a world that seems to be losing it. I love my people.

I do whatever it takes to feel connected. I call. I text. I email. I reach out until I find peace.

And don’t let anyone fool you because there is peace to be found in this world.

How do I know?

Because I have it.

I have found peace and much of that journey has come from learning to be real. Learning to risk being hurt in exchange for experiencing real relationships.

You see, I have finally found the key. As long as I was hiding my insecurities and my failures the people in my life could never fully love me.

Turns out, I was afraid that I wasn’t worthy to love if I had issues so I hid them.

News flash.

We all have issues.

However, our issues should not keep us from experiencing love.

Our fear of being rejected should not have the power to keep us alone.

If we don’t want to feel alone anymore it is quite simple. Start being honest about who you are. Stop letting fear tell you that you must keep your failures and your shortcomings a secret. Face your brokenness and invite someone into it.

Funny enough, my brokenness wasn’t actually the problem in my life. My brokenness was a gift for me to finally experience what I wanted all along.

Love.

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Is This a Time for Rage?

I just finished reading a nationally circulated article that told me that “this is a time for rage”. It was speaking on some of the recent events of the political landscape and the current sexual investigations that are taking place.

I am no stranger to the current world we live in and it is no great surprise for me to see rage, but this was something new. This was the first time that I had actually seen a writer not just speak in a state of rage, but recommend it as the best option as we move through these difficult situations.

I could not believe it.

Really? That is the best that we have?

With all of the tools, emotions and communication styles we have access to we are going to select our rage?

Is that what people really think?

That rage is going to get us through?

Rage is our savior?

Not for me.

I don’t have faith in my rage.

Rage is an emotion, it is not a solution.

When we feel enraged, we feel like we have a purpose. We see the path ahead and we have no doubt that we can conquer it. It makes us feel brave and important.

Our rage makes us feel powerful.

Our rage is an understandable emotion that arises as we journey through some of these difficult experiences, it makes us feel like we are seeing crystal clear, but it actually blinds us. We are unable to see anything else but our emotion and our perception. When we feel rage we are often incapable of listening well and uninterested in learning because we demand to be heard.

I do understand that rage can be quite productive. It can be a great influencer, communicator and motivator to get people in action, but let’s be clear, the action that rage will spark is not one that will bring beauty to this world.

While rage is easy to grow, it is not easily controlled and the more it spreads the harder it is to keep in check.

Rage is loyal to itself and not even the cause at hand.

Rage is not a superhuman power to get things done. It is an ineffective strategy for creating positive change.

We have leaders instructing their followers to take up anger as a tool to solve our problems.

Umm… no thanks.

Rage can ignite fiery passion and can cause intimidation, but is this really going to give us what we want? Is this going to create the environment that we want our children to grow up in?

If encouraged, our rage will produce hate, intolerance, and violence.

Rage has no peace to offer us.

Rage has no answers for us.

Rage is not the solution.

Being unable to control our temper is not our strength, this my friends is actually part of the problem. Rage may have to be a part of all of this, but to credit it as our strength would be a mistake.

Our bitterness, our rage, and our anger will never heal us or create peace in this world. The healing that we find after our rage will.

We will heal this problem by sharing and listening to the experiences that have occurred. We will heal as the stories of darkness get brought to the light. We will heal as people who have found healing share the way. We will heal in our understanding. We will heal as we connect and support one another. We will heal as we become equipped. We will heal as we forgive.

We will heal as we speak to our youth and educate them on these things that have gone unspoken in generations past.

We will heal as we teach people to do better.

We will begin to heal as we better understand the mindsets that have let these actions take place repeatedly while staying in the dark generationally.

We will not heal because of our rage. We will heal despite it.

We need to do better.

Not just with our sexual misbehaviors, but with our response to them as well. We must find a different way to navigate these difficult experiences.

Rage may be a step along the journey, but should not be the destination. Make no mistake about it, we want to keep moving forward.

We want a better world for every woman and every man. We want a better world for our children.

If we want better, then we all must do better.

Our culture needs an answer to this problem and I am sure that rage is not that answer.

No matter how we feel, our rage is not actually effective for us to get what we want.

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7 Things Holding Us Back in Life

What if there is more to my life than what I am living? With all of my heart, I want to live the life that I am supposed to live while I am on this earth, but what if I miss it? What if I get to the end of my life, look back and think,

“My God, what did I do?”

This thought haunts me at times, never enough to leave me paralyzed, but enough to keep me moving. I want this life to matter. I want my life to matter. I want to challenge myself. I want to challenge others to keep moving forward. This life does have a purpose and that purpose is unique for each of us. It is vital that we get our head in the game. We get no second chances. We only get today, we only get right now.

What is holding us back from living our fullest life?

Fear

Fear keeps us living in the future. Fear tells us that our present moment is for preparing for, or worrying about, our next one. We need to have a strong stance against our fear.

 Fear will keep us stuck in a future that often never comes.

Fear keeps us fixated on our nightmares titled “what-if”. Make no mistake about it, our fear will steal our lives from us if we let it.

To live in the most dreaded fantasies of our future is to forget to live our present moment and to forget to live our present moment is to not live at all…

Shame

  Fear keeps us stuck in the future, but our shame keeps us stuck in the past. We all have a relationship with shame, some more than others. Our shame keeps a close eye on us. It is always there to remind us that we have failed and that we most likely will again.

Our shame keeps us tiptoeing through life and intimidated to live free.

We all have moments that we fail and then we all have those moments that we fear we may be a failure. During our moments of failing, we must hold fast to the belief that despite our falling short, we are not a failure. We must learn to offer ourselves grace.

Secrets

 Our secrets keep us isolated. No matter how many people we have living around us we will always be alone if we can’t find a way to live openly and honestly. Our secrets stay in the darkness whispering to us that we should always keep them protected.

Of course, we don’t want to tell the people that we love that we have ugly things within ourselves, but we must. It is imperative that we find a way to invite people into our darkness. Not everyone, but someone.

If we truly want to live free, we must find a way to live an honest life, no matter how much it scares us.

Lack of Self-Awareness

I am a full believer in self-evaluation. We need to understand ourselves. We need to understand our strengths, our weakness, and our brokenness. We need to own that we are made up of both beauty and ugly and that it is our job to sort through it all and own it all. It is our job to grow, it is our job to heal.

Blaming our life on our circumstances

This is perhaps one of the most common, yet most unacknowledged thing that is holding us back from our life. We believe that our problems in life are caused by our circumstances. We think that our work, our marriage, our friends, or our parents are the problem. NO. They are not our problem. Our circumstances are not the problem.

Our problem is that we do not know how to thrive through our difficulty.

We want someone to blame so that we don’t have to take responsibility. Even when life or people disappoint us, it is ultimately our responsibility to decide how it will affect our life moving forward.

Distractions

Wow. Right now in life, this is a big one. Our technology gives us an endless supply of distractions. In a life that seems to constantly be bustling around me, I often turn to my phone for an escape. I am fully aware that I have missed precious moments while I was looking for a distraction that never seems to satisfy.

We must seek to live present. Have time on social media, sure, but do so on purpose and not accidentally wasting large amounts of our lives in little chunks of time.

Seeking Validation

We are living in such an interesting time because we are constantly able to receive instant validation. Feeling down? Post a cute pic and instantly start receiving likes to remind yourself that you are awesome… or not.

At some point, we have to own our worth for ourselves. We cannot rely on other people, online or in real life, to give us our self-confidence.

If you want to live confident there are steps you will have to take and none of those steps involve someone else doing it for you.

There are many things that can keep us from living our best life, but my advice is to get real, live present, and push forward.

Don’t ever give up on the life that you want to live and the person that you want to be.

Besides, what else do you have to do?

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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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Finding Confidence in a Surprising Place

I have a very outgoing personality. Most of the time, I naturally feel confident.

But through the years, I have learned that having an outgoing personality is not the same thing as being confident with who you are.

When life was going well, I felt confident. However, when I encountered circumstances that made me feel inadequate or insecure, I felt extremely aware of my negative qualities. In those moments, I felt ashamed and I lost my confidence.

How real is my confidence if it can be taken away by mere circumstance?

I wanted more.

For a long time, I thought the reason I struggled with confidence was because I possessed too many negative qualities. I tried hard to get rid of my “bad” qualities by working to grow my “good” qualities.

I thought that in time the good would eventually take out the bad, right?

Even after lots of effort, something would happen and my bad qualities would come and smack me in the face.

UGH!

I hated my faults. I viewed difficult circumstances as my enemy. I also became very defensive if anyone hinted that I was inadequate.

When my whole goal was to be perfect, it felt very personal when someone pinpointed my imperfection.

However, there was a major problem. I am far from perfect.

FAR.

In my life, I have been lazy, inconsiderate, selfish and self-centered. I have been rigid and defensive. I have been manipulative.

I have had many times of being flat “wrong”. I have projected blame on others when the blame lied with me. I have been quite blind to myself and have had an entitled attitude.

I have not always been a good friend. I have forgotten things I shouldn’t have and held on to things that I should’ve let go.

I have had many awkward moments where I find myself doing quite idiotic things. I am easily distracted and I can be weirdly paranoid. I am disheveled and forgetful. I often run late.

I can be a little “much” for some people.

It is common for me to speak before thinking and I often say stupid things. At the same time, I can overthink simple things.

I used to be utterly ashamed of these qualities.  I hated each and every one of them for making me feel so unlovable. I thought if I worked hard my "bad" qualities would eventually go away..

Makes sense, right?

Wrong.

I wasn't becoming confident. I was learning to hide. This was not my goal.

 I had to stop acting like I wasn’t broken. Whether I liked it or not, I was. It was time to face myself. The real me. It was time to decide if I really wanted to grow confident.

I was never going to find confidence until I embraced my brokenness.

I did not embrace these qualities to defend them. I embraced them so that I could accept them, I accepted them so that I could sort through them, then I sorted through them so that I could find healing.

Through years of learning to embrace my brokenness, I have experienced so much healing. I am more honest and authentic than I ever have been.

Who would’ve guessed that the key to finding confidence would not be in my perfection but my imperfection?

Not me.

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I’m Offended {And I’m Missing the Point}

In recent weeks, I have been obsessing over the experience of being offended. I’ve been studying it. Listening. Watching. Questioning.

Offense is beyond interesting.

Offense feels like passion.

It feels righteous.

It feels justified.

Being offended makes us feel powerful and productive. When we get offended, it feels very important. It almost feels as if we are getting something accomplished. Which is quite intriguing.

Offense happens when someone disrespects us, devalues us, or disagrees with us.

We also take offense when someone does not respect our pain or validate a loss that we have experienced.

When we are offended, we feel justified to say, feel, or do, whatever we want.

Free pass.

Perhaps we don’t say whatever we want to the person, but we will undoubtedly find someone to express our outrage.  We want to be told that we are right in everything that we feel and justified in everything that we said.

Our offense keeps us laser focused on them and their failure. It frees us of any responsibility to own our reactions, emotions or perceptions.

Being offended is centered on the priority to blame them for everything, including the emotions that have risen within us.

When we are offended, grace and compassion are not necessary. We are not looking for a different perspective. We are looking for validation. We want every emotion that we feel to be respected.

Being offended feels powerful, but it’s not. It is actually void of power. We are not valiant. We are emotional.

It is not hard to follow our emotions. It is hard to challenge them.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not talking about changing viewpoints to what the opposing side is saying. I am talking about taking responsibility for the extreme passion, anger or hurt that we allow to go unchecked and unresolved.

We must take responsibility for ourselves.

Our emotions. Our words. Our actions.

We must own them. We should prioritize understanding them. We should be dedicated to maturing them.

Being offended feels productive, but it is only truly productive if we use the experience as an opportunity to grow.

There is so much to learn about ourselves when we are offended.

Why do we feel the way we feel? Why are we so upset? Why are we unable to disagree respectfully? Why did what they said bother or hurt us so much? Why is it important that they agree with us?

Next time we find ourselves offended let’s try to resist the urge to blame.

Next time, let’s embrace the opportunity to grow.

Surprising enough, our job in this life is not to change them.

It is to grow ourselves.

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Learning to Let Go and Live Free

I used to have a hard time letting go of things.  I would hold on to my bitterness, hurt, anger, and disappointments.  I carried them around with me long after they had happened and I prided myself with my ability to do so.

I felt like if someone told me to let go of these things, it meant they didn’t value how hard the experience was for me. I actually felt it was almost offensive for them to suggest.

“How dare you tell me to forgive someone who hurt me so deeply. You obviously don’t care about the pain that they caused me.”

“How dare you tell me that I should just let something go.”

It wasn’t just my disappointment of others that I held onto. I would hold on to my own mistakes. I feared that if I let them go, then I might make that same one again. This scared me, because I was afraid of failure.

I didn't only carry my past with me. I also carried my future. You may be wondering, how could I hold on to something that hasn’t even happened yet?

Simple.

My expectations.

I used to hold on to my expectations and my plans as if they were glued to me. I had no plans of letting go.

Carrying all of these things made me feel powerful. Honestly, I used to think that letting go was for weak people. It was for those people who just couldn’t handle the stresses of life.

I loved control.

It made me feel safe. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I felt as if I simply controlled enough things that I would never be disappointed. That makes sense, right?

Except for one little problem.

I was so impressed with how much I was carrying that I never realized how much it was holding me back.

My past was turning me bitter and my future was filling me with fear.

All the time that I thought I was in control over it all, my past, my present and my future, I was actually not in control at all. Everything I was carrying had me trapped. It weighed me down.

I was a slave to it.

The past several years, I have dedicated my life to letting go. Letting go is not something that has come naturally for me in the slightest. It is a learned behavior.

Some things in life are simple and this is one of them.

Hold on or let go.

If we choose to hold onto our disappointments and fears in life, it will hold us back. Make no mistake about it, the very thing we think we are controlling will end up controlling us.

If we choose to own our brokenness and choose to forgive, release, and heal then we get to walk free.

There is no way around it. It is simple. Not easy, but simple. And beyond worth it.

I challenge you today to release the heavy load that you are carrying around. Only in letting go have I been able to find myself.

You may just find the same to be true.

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Breakdowns Often Lead to Breakthroughs

Breakdowns are not the most enjoyable experience, but they happen to us all. Well, at least they happen to me. Recently, I had quite the breakdown...

I had been feeling overwhelmed for months. I kept trying to find my way out of this feeling, but I couldn’t seem to.

It all felt confusing and slippery. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on what was really bothering me. I tried to talk about it, but it didn’t seem to help. Until one night when my emotions collided with my circumstance and I finally felt the dam break loose. I sat on my couch, crying to my husband.

I cried and talked and cried some more.

As I talked, our kiddos were going wild, our doggie was ringing her potty bell and I was painfully aware that every hamper in our house was overflowing with dirty laundry.

I felt more overwhelmed as I seem to be unable to even have an uninterrupted breakdown.

My voice cracked and I closed my eyes.

I felt ashamed and I wanted to stop talking. I have said a lot of hard things to Carter in my life and these were by far not the most difficult. However, even after years of living vulnerably, it is still sometimes hard for me to share some of the intimate places within myself… especially when I feel like it sounds silly or overdramatic.

No matter how silly I felt, I knew I had to keep talking. As I continued, I finally felt I was uncovering the real reason I was feeling overwhelmed.

The fog felt like it was lifting and I felt like I could see clearly what was really happening within me.

I started to feel better.

 Relief.

I have spent years learning how to process through my experiences and emotions in order to move forward in my life. Putting words to my frustrations, fears, anger, and shame has been vitally important and most helpful.

When I speak my fears out loud it helps me put them in perspective. Talking them out helps me pinpoint thoughts and mindsets that need to be corrected.

Understanding who I am is a huge priority in my life. I want to understand my struggle, but ultimately I want to conquer it.

I am always looking to grow from who I am to who I could be and breakdowns are the perfect opportunity for self-evaluation. My unfiltered emotions reveal things within me that are typically buried deep. Stressful circumstances are a great opportunity to sit back and listen to myself.

From my experience, the biggest breakdowns have the potential to give way to the greatest breakthroughs. It doesn’t always feel the most pleasant, but can pay off big time.  

Don’t fear the breakdown. Find someone who is safe to breakdown with. Let them love you. Let them listen to you, but more importantly, listen to yourself. Say the things that you feel, even if they are ridiculous.

Not to give your emotions the power, but to take the power back from them.

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Our Intentions Matter... A Lot

Have you ever done the right thing for the wrong reason?

I have.

Growing up, I was taught that my intentions were just as important, if not more, than my actions.  However, I did not fully embrace this teaching.

It was easy for me to convince people, including myself, that my motivations in life were pure. However, my intentions were often fueled by more than I was willing to admit.

I was filled with the need to prove something to the world, but ultimately, I wanted to prove something to myself.

I was scared. I was scared of making a mistake. I was scared of failure. I was scared of rejection. I was scared of losing control. And to top it all off, I was ashamed of all of these things.

I felt like I should be more than I was.

And I was afraid that someone would find out.

It was not natural for me to question my own intentions. That is until one day, I decided to walk away from the façade and reconcile my internal motivations with the outward perception I had created.

The last several years, I have been on a journey to purify my intentions. I now live in a constant place of evaluating my motivations daily.

Why am I doing what I am doing? Why am I saying what I am saying?Am I feeling ashamed? Am I feeling hurt? Am I being dishonest? Am I being hurtful?

Am I looking for people to accept me? Am I looking for someone to validate my worth? Am I looking for people to approve of my choices?

Am I afraid of possible conflict? Am I afraid I may disappoint someone?

I am no longer trying to prove anything, but trying to understand myself.

I am dedicated to understanding who I am and what motivates me in this life. 

The reason why we do the things we do is of utmost importance. Our intentions are the very thing that is fueling our choices. What would happen if we were all honest about our intentions?

Perhaps we should start with being honest with ourselves.

Our why matters. It matters a lot.

Are we being fueled by jealousy, insecurity, fear, anger, hate, comparison, or shame? What is our motivation? What is our intent?

Doing good things in this life is wonderful, but better than doing good things is doing them for the right reason. If we want to truly find freedom, we will have to come face to face with our real intentions.

 It is our responsibility to own our intentions.

No one can choose this journey for us. We have to demand ourselves to be honest with who we are, motivations and all. Not to feel ashamed, but to grow.

Whether we want to change them or not, we must face our intentions and own them. Make no mistake about it, if we do not own them, they will, in fact, own us.

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It Is Not Hard to Have Opinions

It is not hard to have opinions. It is not hard to be opinionated. It really isn't.

It is not hard to tell other people how they need to change. It is not hard to see the faults in other people. It is actually quite easy.

It is not hard to shame people for their failures. It is not hard to demean people for their beliefs.
It is not hard to sit back on our keypad and type from a place of superiority about how other people are getting life wrong.

These things are NOT hard.

What is hard, however, is to get out of our chairs, to look in the mirror and ask ourselves what we are REALLY bringing to the world... outside of our Facebook opinions.

Make no mistake that we are not taking a noble stand by voicing hateful thoughts.

It is not hard to stand in hate.
It is, however, hard to serve in love. 

It is not hard to judge someone based on their beliefs that we don't understand.

It is hard however to try to understand someone who believes differently than we do and it is even harder to choose to love someone that we don't understand. It is hard, but we should be able to do this. This is a skill vitally necessary in this world.

I understand that “their” politics, religion or other beliefs in life may be completely "wrong". I am sorry that they do not believe as you do. They will have to own the consequences of their beliefs, but we must own the consequences of ours.

It is so intriguing to me that we hold onto our idealistic ideas stronger than we hold on to our love.

It is really fascinating how we can say we are standing for love while spewing hate.

Let's stop thinking about "them" and let's start realizing that we have the ability to change the world.

Words have power.

We need to understand that power and own what we are producing with our words.

Our opinions do matter. They do. But what matters greater is how we use them and how we treat those with differing opinions than our own.

We have freedom of speech, but let's not get that confused with believing our words don't come at a cost.

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Embracing My Brokenness

In my life, I was the person with the answers not the person with the problems. Don’t get me wrong, of course, I had problems, BUT I chose to avoid them if at all possible.

I hated moments of conflict, failure, and misunderstandings because those experiences had a way of highlighting my need for growth.

I trained in Jedi maneuvers to ensure that nothing ever came back and pinpointed to my brokenness. I was a master at making sure that you or they were always pinned with the “issues”.

Not me. I knew too much. I was too advanced for issues. Issues were for common folk.

The girl with the answers can’t be broken.

Right?

Except I was.

I was broken, but I didn’t know how to be.

Does that even make sense?? I don’t care if it does or not. That’s how I lived.

I wanted to be perfect.

It wasn’t about being better than you. It wasn’t about you at all. I didn’t want you to fail, but I would rather you fail than me. Not because I didn’t love you, but because so much of my life was centered on avoiding my need for improvement.

I did not know how to accept the things within myself that were not beautiful. I hated my jealousy. I avoided my insecurity. I resented my anxiety.

I did not enjoy feeling weak and to me, my brokenness made me feel very weak.

So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I acted like my brokenness didn’t exist. I created a LaLa Land that said that no matter what I felt I would just be *strong*.

Don’t be a broken person. Ever.

Somewhere along the way, I felt it was part of my identity to not be broken.

I see now that this was a major problem.  I was missing the point the whole time. Ignoring my brokenness was keeping me stuck. 

My brokenness is just as much a part of me as my strengths. My brokenness is part of my story.  It deserves to be understood.

All the time I prided myself in not needing to change, I was really robbing myself from my potential.

It has been the process of embracing my brokenness that has taught me my strength. I have faced who I am. The good. The bad. The ugly.

I finally know myself. 

I know that I am beautiful... a beautiful work in progress. 

So much better to be a work in progress than the girl who isn’t making any progress at all. 

Finding freedom in facing my brokenness. Do you want to join me?  CLICK HERE!!! 

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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