{when you feel like you are failing}

The valleys-I think we can all say we have had some in our lifetime. Maybe you are in one right now. Maybe you just came out of one-and you're stronger, but the sting of that experience has changed you, you're not the same. You messed up, you failed-but, it's not over.

It's those valleys, those low spots where life can feel stagnant and dark, where you ask yourself what it is you are doing and does it mean anything? 

Those moments when you feel like you are failing at life.

It's realizing at 30 that maybe what you went to college for and have worked at for the last 7 or 8 years isn't resonating with who you are.

It's the waking up in the night and looking around at your life and nothing is what you planned or thought it would be---it's the getting up in the morning and feeling like there has to be something more than this.

It's those moments when you compare the work of your hands to the work of everyone else and wonder how yours could ever matter or if anyone will ever notice. It's the years of investing your heart into something and still not seeing the fruit.

It's the secret fear in all of our hearts.

It's the knowing we only get one shot at this life and somehow we keep messing it up-the valleys, they keep coming.

There is not a person on this planet who, to their very core, in the back of their minds doesn't feel like they have failed in some way or another.

Failure feels like weakness & who wants to admit they are weak, that they need something more than their own strength to get through?

Who wants to admit that maybe we don't always get it right?

Not me.

Isn't that why we look so strong? Why that other mom at the park looks so put together, but when she gets home she falls apart. Or why your coworker seems to always be one step ahead, but everything else in their life is one step behind. 

We can't do it all, we can't give here and not fail there. 

So, friend if today you are in a low place, if it feels like you are failing where it matters most, it's okay.

You're not supposed to get it right, you're not supposed to do this alone or "keep it together" or be that person we all want to be---because even that person feels like you, they are failing too.

Those moments of failure, those valleys-that's real, that's life, that's our souls remembering that this is not our home---that this life, it's not all there is. 

Those moments do not own you or define you--they change you and if you are putting your hope in something more, they bring you closer to that something more. 

And friend, if you do not know that feeling of hope, I pray you do one day soon---that you could stop relying on your own strength and drowning in your weakness, but instead find a hope that will carry you.