{"id":8,"date":"2014-02-25T06:17:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T06:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/2014\/02\/my-sacred-scared\/"},"modified":"2018-04-23T16:55:49","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T16:55:49","slug":"my-sacred-scared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/2014\/02\/my-sacred-scared\/","title":{"rendered":"My Sacred Scared."},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite writers, Glennon Melton, had a special series on her blog<\/a> this week called the Sacred Scared.\u00a0 She asked some of her closest friends to share their innermost insecurities: \u201cOur sacred scared is our deepest fear- the one we hide because we think that if anyone knew about it they wouldn\u2019t love us anymore. What we find when we share our sacred scared is that it\u2019s the very thing we should be sharing more. Because our sacred scared is the key that unlocks our humanity. When we share it, people love us more because we\u2019ve given them permission to love themselves more. Sharing our sacred scared is like handing a world full of messy, waiting people an invitation to show up as they are.\u201d – See more at: http:\/\/momastery.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/18\/sacred-scared\/#sthash.GSiKZVHd.dpuf<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2014, if the theme of my life is to be healthier in all ways \u2013 spiritually, physically, emotionally, financially, among many others \u2013 well, what better way to find emotional health than to share that which keeps you prisoner? I\u2019ve certainly written about my \u201cstuff\u201d before on this blog \u2013 I\u2019m no stranger to offering up my insecurities and my messiness, in life and in my kitchen:<\/p>\n

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I was so surprised that this picture received so many likes on Facebook.\u00a0 A picture of my crazy, cluttered, busy kitchen \u2013 a never-ending mess of lunchboxes, dirty dishes and baby paraphernalia.\u00a0 It just goes to show you I may not be alone.\u00a0 What a relief! Anyway, in the vein of the Sacred Scared, here\u2019s mine: I\u2019m afraid I will never be content with my life.<\/strong><\/em> There.\u00a0 I said it.\u00a0 This girl, this one right here, who is blessed with a fantastic partner, my best friend \u2013 a man God clearly made for me \u2013 and three beautiful, healthy babies, lives in a constant state of \u201cwhat\u2019s next?\u201d Man, y\u2019all, it\u2019s an exhausting way to live.\u00a0 And it covers so many areas of my life, a big one being the career path I walked away from.\u00a0 This kills me because sometimes I still can\u2019t believe I existed so long in a world where my physical self was scrutinized and poured over at every audition.\u00a0 I\u2019m shocked that my fragile self was able to survive.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never forget \u2013 shortly after Vann and I returned from our honeymoon in Italy and I was coming down from our never-ending pasta and vino high \u2013 my agent took one long look at me from top to bottom and asked me if I had gained some \u201chappy wedding weight\u201d and told me I needed to lose five pounds.\u00a0 And this was BEFORE my three precious girls ravaged my body into something I don\u2019t recognize.\u00a0 Now I feel so incredibly far from those days of auditioning in Chicago that it hurts.<\/p>\n

When I was single and working I wanted to be married and have babies.\u00a0 Now that I have those (wonderful) things, I miss the days of freedom and doing things that affect (and benefit) only me.\u00a0 Listen, every actor who is honest with themselves would admit they have a bit of a narcissist living inside of them.\u00a0 It goes with the territory: you want people to tell you how great you are, how talented you are, to applaud you, give you accolades.\u00a0 You want to win that coveted role, the one every other ing\u00e9nue in town is vying for.\u00a0 You NEED it.\u00a0 You need to know that you are great.\u00a0 Motherhood doesn\u2019t give you that feeling of success.\u00a0 No one is applauding your peanut butter sandwiches \u2013 to the contrary it\u2019s often \u201cOh, Mom!\u00a0 I don\u2019t like [insert child\u2019s most bemoaned food here]\u201d, pushing the plate away with a nose pointed upwards.\u00a0 Motherhood is often a thankless job \u2013 let\u2019s be honest, it is.\u00a0 In the grand scheme of things, the big picture, the benefits and blessings of Motherhood far outweigh the day-to-day struggles \u2013 but when you\u2019re in it, you\u2019re in it.\u00a0 Your husband will tell you you\u2019re a great Mom, heck, you might even get to go have lunch with your girlfriends on Mother\u2019s Day and toast cocktails and laugh that you made it another year.\u00a0 But you\u2019re not getting any stellar reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times.\u00a0 No one is bringing you bouquets of flowers and taking you out for opening night drinks.\u00a0 That is just truth.<\/p>\n

This manifests itself in many different ways.\u00a0 One is in my physical body.\u00a0 The one I struggle to even look at in the mirror somedays.\u00a0 The one where I know that no matter how many crunches I do or how clean I eat, nothing but surgery will take away that wrinkly skin that three c-sections left me with.\u00a0 And you can wax poetic all the day long about where your babies came from and how romantic it is that that those stretch marks stand for something \u2013 but do they really?\u00a0 And what if it doesn\u2019t matter what they stand for?\u00a0 The truth is they just make you sad when you look at them. Too much?\u00a0 This is my Sacred Scared, friends.\u00a0 Do you still love me even as I\u2019m sharing the worst of the worst of my insecurities? This also manifests itself in how I spend money, my love for stuff, forever trying to fill that void and make up for the years we spent as a nomadic family, 3 high schools in as many years, no roots, forever moving, forever starting over.\u00a0 I feel sad, I order something online, I feel better.\u00a0 I covet homes with clean baseboards.\u00a0 I hate our white oven, which should certainly be stainless steel.\u00a0 We have no furniture in our front room, and sometimes it makes me angry.\u00a0 I am forever chasing this dream of a better home, a better kitchen, a better backyard, a better wardrobe, a better self.<\/p>\n

There is good news though, friends \u2013 God blessed me with a wise and loving partner, who takes me for all my faults and insecurities and loves me anyway \u2013 and he said to me recently that I needed to \u201cstay in my own lane\u201d \u2013 meaning, when I\u2019m focused on myself and what I need to do to better myself and keep myself in tune with God\u2019s voice \u2013 well, I\u2019ll be less focused on others and the discontent I struggle so honestly with. And I\u2019ve been thinking a TON about this.\u00a0 I\u2019m reading Ann Voskamp\u2019s One Thousand Gifts and have thought a gratitude journal might be a fantastic exercise for me.\u00a0 The more I can focus on the things I have to be thankful for \u2013 living a life of gratitude \u2013 my heart and all its wanderings will find the peace I know God so lovingly gives.\u00a0 Thankfully, I\u2019m not alone in this.\u00a0 God knows my heart.\u00a0 He knows I love my family desperately. But guess what?\u00a0 I am an imperfect, sinful person, only brought whole by my Savior.\u00a0 Truth: I will forever covet that vacation on Facebook and long for the life I once knew \u2013 until I can fill that void with the only One it was made for.\u00a0 Period. It\u2019s my hope in this new year that I can find my way through the muck and the mire of discontent to a life full of gratitude \u2013 truly, to that place in my heart that my Lord resides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite writers, Glennon Melton, had a special series on her blog this week called the Sacred Scared.\u00a0 She asked some of her closest friends to share their innermost insecurities: \u201cOur sacred scared is our deepest fear- the one we hide because we think that if anyone knew about it they wouldn\u2019t love […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4227,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/4227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}