No More Sick Days in the Trenches

This Real Motherhood Moment is brought to you by water proof mascara, yoga pants and grumpy babies. 

Well, I'm in the trenches today. Combine a sick baby, a sick momma, PMS and sudden wave of generalized anxiety and you get the above picture. Imagine it as a little snapshot of my day, which has kinda sucked. 

I'm not going to lie; today is not a sunshine-and-roses, I'll-laugh-about-it-later, keep-calm-and-carry-on kinda day. It's a heavy, deep-dark, soul stretching, spirit draining, Jesus-be-my-strength kinda day. To be totally honest, sometimes motherhood feels like a cage that I can't escape. I love my son, fiercely. There aren't words that could adequately capture how precious a gift he is to me. Or how thankful I am that he crashed into our family and sent my life on a different trajectory than I had expected.  But sometimes the sheer weight of someone needing me every moment is so suffocating. Sometimes I sigh and imagine the career I was about to launch. 

Lately I've found myself waking up and longing for those good old college days.  Normally this is while I'm making a bottle at 5am. Those sweet, wonderful, college days where I only had to take care of me, myself and I. Where I pursued nothing but education and relationships and God. Where anything and everything was seemingly possible. Where I could stay in bed if I was sick and turn off my phone and binge watch The Office on my parent's Netflix account. 

Nostalgia, I've decided, is a fickle drug. 

How easily do I forget how difficult those days were, when I selfishly only cared about me, myself and I. How can I long for the days during which I almost threw away my relationship with Josh and, more importantly, God.  Those four years were some of the darkest of my life. I could stay in bed, sure, but how can I forget how often it seemed impossible to get out of that bed. I was in the middle of some pretty serious bouts of anxiety and depression. And I was on the threshold of treating a physical illness I had lived with, unwittingly, my whole life. An illness that would only, miraculously, be healed by giving birth to my son.

Nostalgia makes light of the past and skips over the pain of it. The truth is we all have days in the trenches, that doesn't change. God gives us the strength to fight the darkness at whatever stage of life we're in. 

When I think about it with a clear mind. I wouldn't trade the struggles of today for the struggles of yesterday. The joys of today are far better, far richer, than the joys of the past. Today is difficult, but it. Is. Worth. It. 

So, if there are some other mommas, students, wives, husbands, friends out there that are having a bad day, I totally feel you. I'll pray for you and you pray for me. I found that prayer and love is all that you really can hold onto when you're in the trenches.