Life is HARD

Ya'll.  I've had this post on my mind and in my heart for quite some time now and just haven't had the courage to write it.  Or maybe I just couldn't organize my thoughts well enough to put it on paper per se.  But here I go.  There aren't going to be any pictures of my kids. No funny stories. Just a little bit of a brain dump about what's on my heart and mind.

These past 6-8 weeks have rocked my world. Seriously. Rocked. My. World. And what I've learned is that life is HARD.  Not just the "what's for dinner" hard but REALLY HARD.  I've got friends going through stuff I can't even IMAGINE facing. And I don't know if it's intentional or unintentional but we put up this façade so many times that life is easy and we don't have tough times.  But you know what.  That just ain't true.  Life is hard.

When my mom was very close to passing or just after she passed, I can't remember, I had text conversation with a friend that was dealing with an issue that was pretty big to her.  She made the comment in our texting that her issue is pretty trivial considering what I was going through.  But you know what? It wasn't trivial to her and that made it not trivial to me either. We all have BIG things that we're facing.  And let us never trivialize what we consider a big event.  Not to ourselves and not to each other.

Friends, YOUR problems are my problems too.  Just because my problem may seem big to you that doesn't mean what you are going through isn't important! Or that what you are going through isn't hard. Yes, losing my mom was devastating, and traumatic and very difficult. But what you are going through could be those exact same things.  And I hope to never be the person that makes any of my friends feel less about what they are going through! I want to be supportive. I want you to talk to me. I want you to talk to other people if you don't want to talk to me. I don't want us to feel like that everyone else has their life together because the truth is, no matter what we put out there on Facebook, or Instagram or what we tell you in real life, we don't have our crap together and life isn't perfect. I don't want us to feel embarrassed that we are going through a tough time.  It's not embarrassing.  Life is HARD and we don't need to be embarrassed to admit it.

I'm not sure what my point is.  I guess my point is at times we have no idea what people are going through.  Let us be a little more understanding with each other.  Let us be supportive.  We DO NOT know how we would react in situations until we are in them.  Let's not say "well I would..." or "you should do..." because you know what? We DONT know what we should do.  We DONT know what our friends should do in situations.  Life is hard. There's no instruction manual.  And if there was, there would be more exceptions than there would be rules.

So let me put this out there.  I don't want to judge you.  I want to support you.  Your big problems are my big problems too.  I'm sharing your burden with you. I'm crying for you.  I'm praying for you.  I'm thinking about you.  I'm hurting with you.  I'm not judging you. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm not disappointed in you. 

Life is HARD.

But let us all try and help each other to make these hard times a little easier.