Who I am, I'm coming to realize is actually not much different than who a lot of moms are. And while that may seem ordinary to some, to me, it is one of the greatest truths I have come to cherish with all my heart. Knowing that someone else has been there simply means I'm not so alone in all of this after all. But in order to know that, I had to share. I had to open up the vaults of my heart and expose the truths. I had to confess that my reality was starkly different than my dreams, and admit that I was constantly at odds with what I wanted and what instead I had been given.

It’s scary to be open and vulnerable with your thoughts, feelings and emotions. We’re fragile. We break easily. We think nobody will understand, and instead people will judge.

We want to look like we have it together. We want to be the person people look to for hope and inspiration. We desire to be all things all the time, and if we actually confessed to the truth, that entire image we created would be shattered.

I know all of this, because I used to be that girl.

I was once the girl that would never allow anyone to truly see who I knew myself to be on the inside. I labeled myself “too much,”, and my greatest fear of being wrongly judged, kept me silent from ever revealing the truth.

Instead, every night I would scribble out my heart and soul onto the pages of my journal, my safe place, my only place I felt I could be real and authentic and simply me. It was how I expressed myself, how I could think, and how I could process life and find some kind of understanding and healing.

Those years were so lonely for me, never feeling known or understood. I had experienced such intense pain and trauma, and I had not one person I felt I could turn to for the support and acceptance that my heart and soul desperately needed.

Sometimes I think we have to walk difficult roads in life in order to finally allow God to show us just the way He truly meant it to be.

God never intended for us to do this alone. And so rather than pouring into the secure pages of my journals, instead I now pour into the public pages of my blog, and I share my truths...sometimes with humor, sometimes with tears, but every time with a prayer that my story will be met with someone saying in their heart, "Me too..."

In my dreams, I am that mom who is absolutely with it. I keep my house swept and picked up, my kids bathed daily, and every meal I cook is balanced and nutritious. In my dreams, I cook. And all the while, I’m ahead of freelance deadlines and laundry never needs to be rewashed due to being forgotten in the washer too many days.

But the truth is, I just sat there for the longest time wondering how to spell "nutritious." Because even though I may attempt all those things, the truth is, I can barely spell all those things correctly in one sentence let alone achieve them perfectly all in one day.

Instead I’m a mom that thinks cooking means grilled cheese and when those special nights actually happen, don’t you know that I am taking pictures and texting friends bragging, “LOOK! I COOKED!”

And even though my teenage dreams look nothing like my grown up reality, I am grateful. I am content. And I am filled with incredible joy as I look at where I am and what I’ve been given. I embrace the quirky. I learn from the hardships. And in the midst of it all, I cling like crazy to the Lord who I know is before all things, and in Him, all things hold together.