GROWTH

Once again, I am on the blogging train. It is something I have always loved doing! I love love to write and share my struggles with people so they do not feel so alone in this life of military moves, motherhood, or just being a certain type of somebody.

Everyone has their own "world" that they live in, and a lot of the time we only see the filtered, edited picture with a beautiful description under the picture. We lead lives based off what we might think social media will "LIKE" or "LOVE".

Well, I lived that life too.

For starters, I am a mother of THREE lively children. They are all LOUD, energetic, and full of life. The apples did not fall far from the tree because their dad and I are quit the same. We are loud, energetic ( a little less these days), and full of life (coffee in my case).

So, I lived that life of 'here's a picture of my kids (who were just fighting) but I made them sit lovingly as if our day has been wonderful'.

Don't get me wrong those pictures will be great to have when they're older but what I am saying is, is that we as a social media loving generation like to share things and compare our lives to the lady who has over a million followers (don't know her from a can of paint) but I try to duplicate her fancy photo. It's not wrong, but our perception of her reality is not her reality. Her house may be prettier than mine and her kids might behave better than mine, but the difference is that she may get paid for these elaborate posts about the outfits they're all wearing. Now, I love photos and enjoy insta-stalking these lovely women, but if I stalk to much I start to compare.

COMPARISON is the THEIF of JOY!

This past year (2018) will forever be etched in my mind as 'Hardest Year of My Life'. Not because I have compared my life to instagram moms.. but because my reality. We moved to Japan in March and literally DOVE into our new life here. I think we dove to avoid the emotions of sorrow and sadness for our "past life" at our last duty station. Once we moved here my husband deployed in May... This brought out all the feelings we had been covering for so long since our move. I wont go into much detail but I spent at least one night every other week at the ER that summer for a child who had swimmers ear in BOTH ears, possible broken bones, you name it we were there for it. Luckily, no one broke a bone except me that summer, but I didn't have time to go to the ER for myself so I toughed through the pain of a broken toe and just let it heal.

I have learned that when God made Eve for Adam as a helper and said IT WAS GOOD, he meant that. It was good, SO GOOD, in fact I would tell my children that almost every day! "God made Daddy for me and me for Daddy." My season of motherhood was SO intense and rough, that I look back and wonder how I made it out of that "first" season of this duty station. (Lucky me, we have 3 more of these seasons)

For me, 2018 was a year of growth. A year of me learning what it REALLY meant to be a strong woman, what it really meant to learn on God, what it meant to be a military wife, a single mother while still being married, and more importantly how to cope with raw, tough emotion. I made friends, I lost friends, I was closest to God I had ever felt, I was angry at God, I was a child crying for her mom, and I was a mother being cried too, all in all it has been TOUGH.

I don't write all this to get a clap emoji or to preach, but to remind myself that social media is not reality. It is a snap-shot of a single second in someone's life. Going through those hard times I didn't have TIME to compare myself to other moms and their perfect worlds on social media. I was to busy making sure my world kept going round. Comparing my world to other's worlds only leaves us feeling inadequate. 2018 made sure I felt that way on my own, but GOD got me through, GOD made me adequate because he led me to Ryan which led me to this life.