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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When Your Marriage Is No Longer Worth the Fight

I will never forget the scariest moment of my marriage. We had been married a couple of years and I found myself feeling very frustrated about some of the things happening between us. I talked to Carter several times about it and he seemed to listen, but our conversations never seemed to bring about any change.

We had been having the same discussion on repeat for weeks.

He may have been listening, but I did not feel heard.

We were not on the same page.

One night, we were lying in bed discussing things and he once again said something that made me very aware he was not understanding the seriousness of how I felt. I laid there feeling defeated and overwhelmed. What was I doing wrong? Why wasn’t I getting anywhere?

Prior to this night, there were many times in our relationship that I had been angry and chose to give Carter “the silent treatment”. While I do not recommend that as a healthy form of communication, this night was different.

I wasn’t giving Carter the silent treatment. I was simply done talking.

I was done trying to express myself.

I was done feeling like I was not a priority.

This night, I was simply ready to go to sleep.

I will never forget when I rolled over in bed and felt something scarier than I had ever felt before. Something much scarier than anger…

Indifference.

You see this night wasn’t me trying to prove something with my silence. This was the first time in our seven year relationship that it simply didn’t feel worth the fight.

We weren’t worth the fight. He wasn’t worth the fight.

This was the night I realized that there was, in fact, something worse in a relationship than arguing a lot and that is not caring enough about the relationship to argue at all.

This was about ten years ago and let me tell you, we have had MUCH harder things we have had to walk through in our marriage, but I don’t know if I have ever felt something scarier than this night.

I was in a marriage, but I felt so alone and I wasn’t sure why. I felt like my husband wasn’t there. And for the first time, I felt like I was ready not to be there too.

I know I am not alone in feeling this way inside of a marriage. Marriage is hard and confusing. If you want to stay married there is something you have to understand, marriage will consist of a fight.

Fighting to keep what you have and fighting for the marriage you want.

I know it can be so easy to become disengaged. It can be so easy to convince yourself to stop communicating things because you have already communicated them... but don’t stop.

Whatever you do, do not allow yourself to feel “indifferent”. While indifference is a nice break from arguing, it is the first step out the door.

Speak. Keep Speaking. Keep Fighting.

Not necessarily with your partner, but for them.

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Not Every Relationship Is Safe... And That's Ok

When I was younger, I thought every relationship was created equal. Of course, as I got older, I realized not every relationship I had was a place for me to be loved, accepted, and appreciated.

For years of my life, I tried to keep track of who I could trust and who I couldn’t. If I found out you did or said something disrespectful about me, I pushed you away. If I believed I could trust you, I brought you close.

It was a constant game of trying to figure out who could be trusted. It was exhausting and left me a bit paranoid that no one could be.

I used to often feel betrayed. I was constantly surprised by the fact that people were not returning the love and effort I was giving them. It made me feel confused, angry, and resentful.

Let me explain to you something I have learned through the years…

Every relationship that you have in your life will fall under one of two categories:

A relationship that offers you a safe place to heal

Or

A relationship that offers you an opportunity to grow.

I used to think that every relationship in my life was intended to be a place for me to find acceptance and love, but this is not the case. We will have very few people in our life that can be trusted to love, honor and value us consistently and unconditionally.

It is silly and naïve for me to expect people to love me as I love them.

Who I am and how I love are decisions I am making for my OWN life. It is not and should not be dependent on the choices that people around me are making. These two things have nothing to do with one another.

The way I love is because of the choices I have made in my life. It has cost me a lot to learn how to be the friend that I am. It has been hard and incredibly disappointing.

If it is so difficult, why do it? Because it is important to me.

It is important to me to be a loving person. It is important to me to be a kind person. It is important to me to be a thoughtful friend. It is important to me to be a safe place for the people in my life and a place that offers unconditional love.

This doesn’t mean everyone in my life believes the same.

Don’t get me wrong, I have relationships that I receive acceptance, love, respect, thoughtfulness, forgiveness, and kindness. I do. These relationships love me no matter what. They give me a safe place to fail and to be broken. However, not every relationship will be this for me.

How well a person can love me determines how open I am with them, but it will not determine how much I value them.

It is imperative we learn not all of our relationships are in our lives for the same reason. Some of our relationships offer a safe place to heal and some of our relationships offer us an experience to grow our love. Both of these things can be equally valuable to our life.

Not every relationship in our life should be about what we are receiving, but sometimes it is about who it can teach us to be.

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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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The Truth about Unconditional Love

Growing up, I heard the term “unconditional love” a lot. Honestly, I had the mindset unconditional love was everywhere. I thought every friend and family member I had would love me, value me, and honor me without condition.

Of course, it didn’t take me long to learn the harsh reality that unconditional love wasn’t as common as I thought. In reality, there are a whole lot of conditions to the relationships we live, some spoken and some unspoken.

For years of my life, I tried really hard to “prove” my worthiness to my friends and family. I did this by trying to be the “perfect” daughter, sister, friend, and wife. Of course, I was nowhere near perfect and this left me exhausted.

I was constantly afraid I wasn’t going to measure up and in the end, they would figure out I wasn’t worthy of their love.

In my early twenties, I became a bit obsessed with trying to be “perfect”, had a minor life breakdown, and demanded I find a new way for myself to live.

I will never forget, standing in front of my bed, crying to my husband that I was exhausted, broken, and completely discouraged. I felt like I was failing at being who everyone wanted me to be.

I felt like a failure… and I was.

I was a failure at reading everyone’s mind. I was a failure at being perfect. I was a failure at being sure no one would ever reject me.

You see, I was extremely afraid my friends and family expected me to be perfect and I knew the truth.

I wasn’t.

I was so afraid once everyone figured it out they would leave me.

And I was afraid to be alone.

This breakdown led me to one of the best journeys of my life. I decided to stop trying to be perfect. I chose to stop trying to be what I thought everyone wanted me to be. I decided to stop trying to control everyone else and their choice to love me or not to.

I looked at my life and realized there were a few people I really did think loved me unconditionally. I chose to talk to them about what I was going through.

I had conversations with them and explained how much I had been afraid of failing them. I talked to them and owned it. This wasn’t their problem to fix. It was mine. I didn’t tell them so they could treat me with care. I told them so they could encourage me to find healing.

And they did.

Year by year, I learned I did have people in my life who loved me unconditionally.

I learned not everyone, but some people are willing to look at the worst parts of me and say,

“That’s ok, I love you”.

I learned it was ok to be the failure that I was.

I became obsessed with getting real with my crap. I didn’t tell everyone everything, but I made sure to at least tell someone everything.

I started feeling free for the very first time in my life.

No secrets.

Nothing left to be afraid of.

I began to understand not everyone in my life is even called to love me unconditionally and I don’t even need that anymore.

I have learned I have been given unconditional love from a few so I can now give unconditional love to many.

And maybe in the end, that’s what it has always been about.

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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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Ten Keys to Experiencing Long-Lasting Love

There is nothing simple or easy about love. If you want to find love that lasts through the years, you will need to be ready to experience a lot of ups and downs.

I have been in a
relationship with the same man for 17 years.

No breaks.

No separations.

Let me tell you
some of the things that I have learned about love after being with the same man
for over half of my life.

Love doesn’t
always feel passionate.

I will never
forget the first time I looked at Carter and felt nothing. No passion. No
excitement. We were dating, and I almost broke up with him. By the next week my
feelings were back and felt stronger than ever.

Moral of the
story, it happens.

If you want to
be with someone long-term, understand that at times, it can feel quite mundane
and BORING!

To this day, if we are in a season that feels a tad dull, I almost get excited because I know with a little effort I can turn dull back into exciting passion. It’s like falling in love all over again, and I love it!

Make an effort.

In relationships
it is SO easy to be aware of everything your partner is NOT doing. But what are
you doing? Never stop making an effort to show them you love them.

Let’s be clear,
there is no magic formula that makes love fun. Your relationship will be what
you both decide it to be. It should not be any surprise that if you choose not
to prioritize your relationship it will show.

Your love will
be what you both choose to make it.

Find adventure
together.

What adventures
do you want to have in this life? Do you want to travel? Would you like to
start your own company? Do you want to have children? Do you want to adopt?

Talk about what
you want out of this life and then talk about it some more.

No matter what
adventures you choose, laugh and have fun as you live it.

Before you
commit to someone, be sure that you are on the same page on what you want out
of this adventurous life!

Don’t settle.

I never settled.
From the very beginning I knew what I wanted from a partner. I wouldn’t have
accepted anything less. I knew what my goals were for my life, and I
continually asked Carter if those would work for him.

Before you
commit to someone, it is very important to talk and talk A LOT. Do not
compromise too much because you may find that you resent them later for keeping
you from what you really wanted out of life.

Be honest.

In my opinion,
honesty is an absolute necessity for a relationship. Don’t want to live honest?
Not fair. Being in a relationship with a person who is not honest is like being
in a relationship with a shadow.

Choose to be
real. Be seen. Experience love.

Give them what
they need. Not what you need.

Find out what
makes your partner feel valued. Do that for them. Don’t love them how you want
to be loved, love them how they want to be loved.

Long lasting
love will involve heartbreak. Don’t be surprised, but don’t give up.

If you choose to
live life with another human for an extended amount of time, it will include
disappointment and heartbreak. We all have our issues and unfortunately, it is
not all that rare to find yourself feeling betrayed by someone you love.

You will never
find someone perfect. Choose to be with the person that is worth the hassle.

Believe in
Redemption. Believe in Restoration.

Value one
another.

Does this seem
like a stupid thing to put on the list?

Well, let me
tell you, it can be harder than you think to value someone after years
together. It is easy to get discouraged with the way your partner lives.

Honor your
partner.

Sure, they’ve
got their issues. I know. We all do. Find things that you love, respect and
admire and honor them for being who they are. Quirks and all.

Never stop
choosing one another.

Don’t stop
experiencing life together. Don’t stop talking about your hopes, goals and
fears.

Continue to
learn about yourself and continue to learn about one another.

Find enough
things to keep you connected. This doesn’t mean you do everything together, but
find a way that makes you both feel like you are on the same page and working
toward the same overall goals.

It take two to
tango.

Now this is
possibly the hardest part of a relationship. No matter what, it takes two.

Don’t get me
wrong, there will be times because of health, stress, or situations that one of
you may feel like you are putting in more effort than the other and that is
part of it.

However, no
matter the effort or desire of one person to make a relationship work, it truly
does take two. It doesn’t always have to be exactly equal or always fair, but
it does have to at least be two people who choose one another and choose to put
an effort into the relationship.

Love.

It is not what I
expected, but is way better than I ever could’ve hoped.

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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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Feeling Betrayed by God

I was twenty-two years old the first time that I felt betrayed by God. Up until that point, I had heard other people talk about being betrayed by Him, but not me. I had known and worshiped my God since the beginning of my life and I never knew him to be anything but kind, trustworthy, and reliable. I had no reason to doubt him, but that changed in the spring of 2009 when something very bad happened to someone I love.

During this time, I remember being at my parents’ house, listening to a Christian teacher that had come into town. She was teaching on the faithfulness and goodness of God. I will never forget sitting in the corner, tears in my eyes, unable to listen to her fully because I was completely entangled in my anger.  Sure, a couple of weeks before I would’ve wholeheartedly agreed with everything she said, but not now. I couldn’t.

God had always been my safe place of refuge and now he felt like my ultimate betrayer. I wasn’t sure what our future together would hold and I was in shock.

I felt like a fool.

I felt betrayed.

I was filled with questions and wanted answers. I began to have some pretty blunt words with God about what in the world He was doing up there on that throne of His.

Through the following weeks, months, and years, I have found answers to my questions. Surprisingly, as I sought to hold God accountable, I found that my beliefs turned out to be partially to blame for my feelings of being betrayed.

Here are five misunderstandings that led me to blame my heartache on God.

1- I had a misunderstanding of pain.

Pain used to be my enemy. I constantly tried to avoid it. I had actually dedicated pain as something evil because I hated it so much.

What if I had it all wrong? What if this life wasn’t about avoiding pain?

There can be such purpose in our pain.

Our pain allows us to grow. Our pain offers us an opportunity to change. Our pain allows us to fight for what we believe. Our pain allows us to see inaccurate beliefs that we have about our self, others, or our God. 

God does not mind pain. I do not believe that He enjoys watching people suffer, but He does understand that sometimes to experience great healing it will feel like great pain.

If we want to live our life to the fullest, we must understand that some pain has a purpose. We must not run from our pain. We must face it and process it until it doesn’t have power anymore.

2- I believed that God could/should control people.

God loves free will. Free will means that there will be situations where people make the wrong choice. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes mistakenly, and sometimes because they choose evil.

God does not control me. God doesn’t control you.

I am given the opportunity to have him a part of my life or I can choose not to. I am not forced onto the path that He desires me to take and no one else is either.

To give God credit for the bad things that people do is utterly unfair.

3- I didn’t think I should have to go through hardship.

Truth is, I trusted him to keep me safe. I trusted him to keep them safe. That was the deal, right? I worship God and He offers me some level of protection from the bad things in this life, right? That was the agreement?

Or not?

Simply put, I had a warped view that my faith would protect me from difficulty.

My faith was never designed to remove difficulty from my life. My faith was designed to equip me to flourish during difficulty.

If we believe that our faith is supposed to make us invisible to hardship, we will never enter into the battles that we were designed to conquer. Don’t avoid hardship. Avoiding hardship will steal so much from us because there is much hardship on the path to victory.

4- I didn’t understand God’s love.

This was the biggest lesson that I learned. God loves me and God loves each person that was involved in my betrayal. There is no exception to this. There is nothing that can be done to remove his love. 

God loves.

Period.

I know this sounds like a really great thing, but to be honest, this was hard for me. I was always taught that God loves us unconditionally; however, deep down, I felt like He loved those who obeyed him more. 

I had to learn how to respect the fact that God loves the people that hurt me and that God gives grace to the people who betray me. This was a long journey for me, but ultimately one of the best lessons of my life. 

5- I did not understand God’s ability to redeem.

Because I had never endured such betrayal, I didn’t understand God’s redemption. I did not know that God can heal all things. I didn’t understand that He can actually bring me and everyone involved to complete healing and NOT just as we were before, but even better!

Our God is the greatest writer of success stories. No matter what despair has come our way, God has a path to heal it all.

The greatest sorrow gives way for the best redemption.

It took some time to get answers to all of my questions, but after it was all over I had learned a lot.

Life is hard. Situations can be utterly disappointing and heartbreaking. People will fail us.

But through it all, God is good.



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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Look at Me Go!!!.. And Watch Me Fall.

I used to be so afraid of failing. So much so that it actually kept me from trying new things.

Not anymore.

I now realize that failure is nothing to fear. What we should really be afraid of is listening to our fears.

Our fears are merely failures that have never happened and often never do.

Why should I spend my life fearing all of my possible failures when I could live my life to the fullest and learn to manage the ones that actually occur?

My fear tries to tell me to stop moving forward and that the risk isn’t worth the reward.

That’s ridiculous.

I now understand that I shouldn’t be afraid of the fall, but I should be deathly afraid of standing still.

I actually have a few words for fear...

“Dear Fear, I won’t stay hidden.

I will no longer whisper because of you. You try to intimidate me from living, but I’m not a person who takes intimidation lightly. I’m not going to hold back one ounce of the life within me.

I have things to say. I have things to do.

I have given you power in the past, but you will never control me again. I am here to be seen. I am here to be heard.

I am not sure where I am headed, but I know I am moving forward. With each day, I find myself growing stronger. With each attack, I’m getting smarter. With each obstacle, I’m gaining wisdom. Every single thing in my life that has come to tear me down has made me stronger. The obstacles I once feared are now on my list of gratitude.

You try to sell quitting as if it will make me free. Quitting will not make me free, it will keep me stuck.

I am no longer afraid of what lies ahead, but of not finding out. I am no longer afraid of you. I am only afraid of what my life will be if I listen to you.

Of course, I still hear you try to intimidate me, telling me that I don’t have it in me, telling me to simply quit now before I fail, taunting me that doomsday is right around the corner.

All of this time, you seemed so real and scary. You talked as if you knew the future and you were only preparing me for the doomsday to come. But now I get it. You are actually afraid of me. You are afraid of what I may become. And you should be.”

-Haley

Hear me now, anyone in the world who may be reading this, keep an eye on me.

Because I am blazing forward and if there is anything I have learned about me trying to run forward it is that I am inevitably going to fall flat on my face.

So if you are someone who likes to watch a good fall, keep a close watch on me.

Because I can guarantee you this, I am moving forward.

I will fail.

I will fall.

And then I will get myself up, brush myself off and blaze forward again.

All the while yelling, “Look at me go!”

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Five Crazy Things That I Learned From Mom

Most of us are blessed with amazing women as moms. I am no exception. I am one of seven children and each of us will tell you that our mom had a major role in shaping who we are today.

My mom is a straight shooter who tells it as she sees it. She goes against a lot of what the world says today is “good parenting” and let me tell you that I am forever grateful for that. She was very involved in each of our lives but challenged us each step of the way. She never viewed it as her job to make life easy for us, but to equip us for this life.

Without my mom, I would not be who I am today, here are a few of the lessons she has taught me through the years.

We are not what we do

My mom constantly told us that our achievements did not define us. She actually warned us that finding great success can confuse us to where our real value should be found. For instance, my older brother played sports from the time he was three through college. I heard her say his entire life. “You are not what you do.” She even encouraged my sister who got amazing grades not to put her value in it.

My mom firmly believes that our value will never be safe if we base it on our achievements. She constantly encouraged all of us not to take our achievements to our heart, but to find our value in who we are, not what we do.

The World doesn’t revolve around me

I am one of seven kids. My parents were often unable to make it to every activity or achievement of mine because my siblings had conflicting activities. I, of course, had moments that I wished they were there, but over time I really embraced the reality that the world did not revolve around me.

I learned to value the things that other people had going on in their lives.

All of us kids understood there were only two of our parents and seven of us. If any of us ever complained about my parents not being there, we received very little sympathy. My mom expected us to know that we were important even if they were unable to make it to each event we had. Many people may feel this is sad, but to be honest, it is one of the things I value most about growing up with many siblings.

Intentions Matter

When we were growing up, my mom constantly challenged our “why”. Why were we doing what we are doing? We were constantly confronted about our intentions, not our actions.

Good grades, behaving, and doing well in sports, didn’t cut it for my mom. Whenever my mom felt suspicious, she called us out on it. Even for our “good” behaviors, she asked us about our motives.

I often felt she was blowing things out of proportion. But as I have gotten older, I realized that she wasn’t blowing things out of proportion. She was hitting the nail on the head. I hated it at the time, but only because she was usually right.

Differences should be celebrated

My family is filled with strong, opinionated, talented people. We are all different heights, with different looks, different strengths, and different weaknesses. This gave each of us plenty of opportunities to feel inadequate. My parents were not shy about celebrating our strengths and being honest about our weaknesses.

My mom loved that we were all different and encouraged us to embrace it. She still often talks about how much she loves our differences.

Embrace truth

My mom has zero desire to live in a La La Land and tends to highly offend people who value that lifestyle. As I have gotten older, it is one of the things I absolutely love most about her.  She calls it like she sees it and she sees it differently than most.

Even when I disagree with her, I appreciate her perspective. She sees the world in a unique way and I have learned a lot from her view.

I love you, mom. Thank you so much for who you are and all of the things that you were determined to teach us. I hope to do just as good as you in my attempt to raise a handful of human beings.

Wish me luck.

 

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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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It’s Ok to Make Mistakes {But Not Really}

“It’s ok to make mistakes.”

This is something I have heard since I was a kid. As I have gotten older, I have become increasingly aware of how untrue this statement is.

When is the last time that you made a mistake? A real mistake. How was it handled? Were you given grace for your mistake? Shame? Consequence? Punishment? Retribution?

More often than not, I have seen people pay for the mistakes they have made. We don’t act like it is just “ok” to make a mistake. Small or large we like people to be held accountable for their missteps.

We like things to make sense and people paying for their mistakes makes sense.

There was a time in my life I became a little bit obsessed with trying not to make a mistake. Let’s say this a bit differently…

There was a time in my life that I tried to be perfect.

And I failed.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be perfect. (Big surprise.)

The more I tried not to make a mistake, the more aware I became of my mistakes, and the more I obsessed over them. I had no ability to offer myself grace because I felt so aware of my inadequacy. I felt like a failure.

My life became quite miserable.

I just didn’t know how to make mistakes and be ok with it. I did not have the skill to fail well. To be honest, I am still learning how to fail appropriately.

It is hard for me to feel it is simply “ok” to make a mistake. It doesn’t feel ok.

I often replay the experience over and over in my head. Each time a fresh wave of shame is there to make my face feel warm and shoulders feel tight. I do not like to say things I shouldn’t have said and do things I shouldn’t have done.

 I do not like to get things wrong. I like to get things right.

However, it seems that my mistakes are a part of my life that I am unable to remove. Maybe that is the point?

Maybe this life should be less about trying to strive for perfection and more about living in grace.

Abundant grace made available for any mistake that has been and that is yet to come. Grace for the mistakes and grace for the failures. Grace for others and grace for ourselves.

Instead of attempting to live in a façade of perfection, I will choose to embrace the messy reality of who I am. I own the fact that I am not perfect and I never will be. I embrace it and I will choose to be kind to myself as I do my best in this life.

I can guarantee that I will not do it perfectly, but that’s ok because…

“It’s ok to make mistakes.”

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