Things fall apart.
A baby is born.
You don’t sleep for 48 hours.
Half your house has a first day at school.
Your home is covered in dirty laundry, baby clothes and school supplies.
You have no food in the house.
You eat hospital food, chick fil a food and sometimes no food.
You miss 5 workouts.
You can’t remember what plain water even tastes like.
You don’t get your photo taken with the new baby because you are ashamed of how you look.
You are ashamed of being ashamed.
And when things fall apart, you only have two options.
You can survey the damage and decide it’s too hard, too much.
You can chalk the whole thing up to yet another failed attempt.
You can convince yourselves that you have no time, no money, no energy to keep going.
You can curse the media obsession with skinny and claim you are fine just the way you are
Or
You can get a grip.
You can focus on why you started this thing in the first place.
You can accept that life is often messy and rarely if ever perfect.
You can remember that your goal is to change the rest of your life, not the rest of the week.
You so strongly desire for things to be perfect. PER-FECT. It’s exhausting. It’s a burden. It’s a discouragement.
But I’m here to tell you that, bowing under your burden, you haven’t lifted up your head in so long that you’re not seeing how much amazing progress you’ve made, how many times – daily – that you win this battle. The battle that only you fight.
This was one of the toughest weeks ever. But you still came out on top. When a person carries a heavy burden for a long time, they get bowed. They only see the stones in the path and the tree roots that want to trip them. The thing is, and it’s an amazing thing, you’ve carried that burden almost all of the way to the Summit. It’s not very long until you’ll be able to set the burden down, look around you, and see that you’re standing in the midst of the most breathtaking and beautiful mountain-top vista.
Now, be encouraged. All we can do is … it’s all we CAN do. But it is more than enough.