RealTalk

What Matters Most:
Raise Your Hand If You’re Ready To Be Real!

 

Sometimes it scares people when God moves you in a new direction. Especially when it kind of feels like your life has become a train wreck. Change is hard, and not just for you, for us all.

Fear rises when things are shaken up and no longer familiar. It is draining when your heart is filled with uncertainty or has been broken, it hurts…but keep telling yourself you will rise.

How do I know this? Because God is the one bringing about the changes. He is the author and finisher of our faith. He is faithful. He turns beauty into ashes. He gives strength to the weak and He tells us to fear not.

The last few years have been a searching, changing, uncomfortable time in our lives. We have gone through hard things with as a family, have felt like “outcasts” at church and have found ourselves kind of in a lonely place with very few friends willing to walk out the “hard” with us.

I think back a few years to a time when things started jarring and jangling in my own heart. At our monthly homeschool skate a Mom came to me with great concern. You know that look when another Mom is walking straight towards you and you think “Oh, crud, what did my kid do now?” She informed me that she could no longer let her children play with my children because one of my kids said the “S” word. You know the “S” word, Shut-up.

At first I was embarrassed and apologized profusely for my child’s horrible choice of words. I left that afternoon feeling like a failure as a Mom.

Related: Live, Love, Blend: In Search of the Perfect Mother

Fast forward to today….Let’s get real, people. Are we going to walk alongside one another and be real or are we going to try to keep up this fake appearance of perfection?! Because at my house…we have a whole lot of imperfection going on every day, all day. I’m not condoning allowing all kinds of foul language to fly…but really, if we avoid each other when a child says “Shut-up” somebody is either far too perfect to be in my life…or they are not being honest with themselves.

We’ve had to take a hard look at our faith and how that should look. In the years past we were so caught up in the outward, do’s and don’ts of what a homeschool Godly family should look like, all the while we were dealing with hard stuff at home.

When God brings about interruption in your life you need to pay attention. When He whispers in your heart of hearts…do not just shove it down and turn away in fear of what others may think. Instead embrace what He is showing you. Be brave. Be gracious. Be willing to push through the fear and embrace the changes He is calling you towards.

The more we are real, and willing to walk with each other, as we are working through hard things the more we find that we ALL have hard stuff that we are either working on or trying to shove down and pretend that it is not there.

Let’s learn to be courageous and vulnerable in being real. Can we stop the judging one another and just love each other where each person, each family is at?

Related: Tales From A Twin Mom: I Lied, I Cried And Other Mommy Confessions

When we choose to do this…then God can start to use us to do real work in our hearts, our homes and our churches and our communities.

Until then we are living fake lives, with fake friends built on lies. No thank you!

I want more. I want real. I want to be the kind of Mom that others know they can be real with and not have to pretend they have it all together. Because, honestly, none of us have it all together…but we are all on this journey called life. It is good, challenging, hard and yet a beautiful..Life.

Let’s walk this journey of Faith and Motherhood together…with love, not harshness and judgement…because God has called us to walk out our faith, together…with love.