Welcome to my weekly post where we take a break from money-related posts and I share about what I'm loving right now and give you a little peek into our life from the past week.
This week started out with a fun family excursion to Stillhouse Hollow Trail & Waterfall. You can read all about that in this post here.
On Thursday, I flew out to San Jose, CA to spend Friday and Saturday at the beach (near Watsonville) with a few friends to celebrate one of my friends’ 50th birthdays.
It was a true vacation for me filled with lots of relaxation, beach-walking, quiet, good conversations, seeing parts of CA I’d never seen before (we got to spend an evening in Monterey and see sea otters!), and good food. It was my first trip this year by myself and I missed my family a lot. It made me so grateful for how I’ve changed my lifestyle now that I rarely travel for business and that I get to spend so much more time with my husband and kids. I’m so grateful for how much we love to be together!
I wrote this Instagram post the day I left:
I woke up at 4:00 am this morning burdened for my kids. Each of them has their own set of struggles and I was reviewing them in my head.
The reviewing quickly turned to worrying which escalated to full out anxiety.
Am I spending enough time with them?
Are they eating healthfully enough?
Did I ask her the right questions in our conversation?
Does she feel loved enough?
Should I have responded to him like that?
Pretty soon, I had spiraled to a place of beating myself up and feeling so much shame and guilt as a mom.
And it didn’t help that I was leaving for California this morning to be gone through Sunday.
I got on the plane still carrying the weight and burden with me. And then I opened up my Bible reading and read this: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you REST.”
And I heard Him whisper to me, “You are free, Mama.”
“When I died on that Cross, it was for you. It was for your mistakes and your mess-ups.”
“It was so you don’t have to carry around the weight of guilt and shame and feelings of not doing enough.”
“Rest in me. Let me be adequate where feel inadequate. Trust Me in the messy, broken spaces.”
“Look to Me when you don’t know how to respond or what the next step is. Lean on Me when you feel overwhelmed with this job I’ve given you to raise these three humans.”
“Let me carry your burdens. Stop stressing and worrying and striving and trying so hard.”
“I came to give you life and hope and joy. Rest in me. You are free, Mama.”
What I’ve Been Learning
More and more, I’m noticing that I’ve stopped feeling the need to wear makeup everyday or spend a lot of time on my hair.
It’s not that I’m giving up makeup or fixing my hair, it’s just that I’m becoming more and more comfortable in my own skin.
I used to pretty much never step foot out of the house without full makeup on and my hair fixed. Now, I often leave the house or get on Instagram Stories with messy hair and no makeup.
It feels good. It feels freeing. And it’s evidence of the work that has happened in my heart in the past two years.
I still like being put together and try to spend a little time making myself presentable every day, but I stopped worrying so much about what other people think or say about how I look.
Some days, I have on a cute top, cute jeans, cute shoes, and full makeup. Other days, it’s a hat, 6-day hair, workout clothes, and little to no makeup. It doesn’t change who I am inside.
And I’m learning that the people who love you most don’t care about how pulled together you look or not. And that the people I want to attract online won’t care either.
There’s so much freedom in just showing up as YOU — on the great hair days and the messy bun days.
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