Life after validation....or what Baby Charlotte reminded me.:)

I have been SERIOUSLY struggling with something this week, and I think I need to blog about it today.  It is about LIFE AFTER VALIDATION or the lack of it on the internet.

A few weeks ago I was having a super hard day.  I don't remember why.  I remember praying a lot.  I remember partaking of delicious chocolates.  I remember still struggling to the max with whatever was making me feel awful.  BJ came home eventually, and I was still cranky to the max.  He even brought home dinner and took away the children.  STILL FELT HORRIBLE. Finally I went onto facebook for the millionth time that day seeking....what?  I don't know.  Something to make me feel better. Hope?  I don't know that that was what I was CONSCIOUSLY looking for, but I think subconsciously I was.

You know what I found?  One of my favorite people in the world ALSO having the worst day ever.  NEEDING chocolate ice cream. I could do that. I knew in my heart I NEEDED to bring her ice cream.  The spirit whispered to my heart that the answer to my struggles was in this task of bringing chocolate ice cream to my friend.

So I left my house as quickly as possible, and got some ice cream at the store and went to my friend's house.  She was so happy to see me.  That felt good.  It felt good to make someone else feel good when I felt completely horrible inside.  I think my husband would have appreciated me giving HIM that kind of effort, but what I needed was a SISTER.  I needed to make someone LIKE ME feel good. And it was more than the ice cream and the togetherness we felt through our horrible days that I needed.  Though I didn't know it yet.

I gave her the ice cream and took her crying baby in my arms and we went and poured out our horrible days to each other.  VALIDATION I think is what most women call this activity.  We validated the hard parts of our lives in the moment.  That felt pretty good, but it wasn't what the spirit was talking about when it prompted me to go see my friend.

You see validation only goes so far.  Life is hard. This we KNOW.  We get it.  WE TALK ABOUT IT CONSTANTLY. ALL THE TIME.  On facebook, in blogs, in comments on yahoo.  Women seem to really revel in validation.  And I get it.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE feeling understood.  I crave it to the max. 

The problem is is that women seem to love validation so much that they decide to set up camp and live in that seemingly "comforting" and "happy" world.

DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE IS LIFE AFTER VALIDATION?!?!?!?! 

That is what I found out next at my friends house, and the message came in the most surprising way.

You see.  I got to hold Baby Charlotte.  Baby Charlotte is one of the sweetest girls in the whole world.  She had been really uncomfortable and crying all day.  Wearing herself out, wearing out her poor momma who just wanted everything to be OK with her family for just a bit so she could do what she needed to do as a person/momma/woman/etc...No rest for the weary is the validation part of being mom.  I totally was feeling that that day in my own house of insanity.:) 

Baby Charlotte had the real message though.  Because you see, validation is only PART of the message of life. 

When I was holding that crying baby I remembered I had to calm down first for her to calm down.  So I started breathing again(I think I had been huffing and puffing all day:).  I started whispering comforting things to her(and me).  I began to feel her sweet spirit and to feel that connection with heaven that new babies bring with them. I began to feel THE SPIRIT.  I began to be open to truth.

The truth is: Life is hard.  IT IS. BUT through the struggles there is more beauty than anything we could imagine.  That as moms we aren't so much sacrificing sleep, our personalities, clean clothes, etc...but something more.  The sacrifices we make in this life as women and wives and mothers have nothing to do with this life really.  The sacrifices we make are eternal.  We give up our pride, our wanting things to be easy so we can all make it to heaven without having to do anything hard or difficult.  It isn't the fact that because we CHOSE free agency that now we need to just man up to the hard times. 

The things Charlotte told me through her spirit were things not worldly, not temporal.  I am not a mom because I want to enjoy the few happy moments in the all the billions of hard times.  The things the spirit spoke of were hope and joy and positivity. And that is REAL. That is TRUTH. That is what I want to fill my life and thoughts up with.  Not because I enjoy being a corny Pollyanna, but because that is TRUTH.  Life is hard....AND THEN I move on to LIFE IS AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL and it is UP TO ME to see it.  Nobody can make me see it.  Validating the hard parts won't make me see it.  Even the spirit couldn't make me see it, UNTIL I CHOSE TO.  The spirit had to get me to a place(holding that angel) to be in a place where TRUTH could finally be whispered to me.

(It is difficult to explain the things the spirit told me.  The spirit told me things FOR ME.  The spirit might have told you different things that would have been what you needed to hear in that moment.:)

It wasn't that my friend and I felt better because we both have to have hard times and isn't it just so hard?  It was, for me at least, isn't it great we get to be sisters together through this experience of crazy life?  It is so hard sometimes, but then we get to be together and enjoy the spirit together.  We get to buoy each other up, not just through validation, but laughter and hope and truth and real reality. 

I wish women could experience this more.  This life after validation.  The WHOLE message of what this life can be about if we choose.  I wish we communicated our hard times in more uplifting ways.  YES, lets validate our hard times so we don't feel alone, but PLEASE let it just be for the moment, and then let us finish the message with truth. THE WHOLE TRUTH. 

When I began to crawl out of the last dark horrible years, the change wasn't caused by life getting better.  The change came by me accepting truth into my life when it was hard to believe it.  Hearing that life is good sometimes super sucks when you are going through hard, super dark times, but it is still TRUE. And filling our lives with the spirit is what is going to affect change in our lives.  Validation can be the beginning.  Even in the scriptures the Savior validated that life was indeed super hard to the extreme at times, but He always ended with HOPE.  With TRUTH.  With THE WHOLE PICTURE.

As women we have, I believe, the MOST POWER TO DO GOOD and TO INFLUENCE GOOD in this world.  Through our children, through our husbands, through our blogs....etc.:)  We need to wield that power of good to not only validate but to lift and inspire each other.  Let's PLEASE validate for minute and lift and inspire for an hour. And not visa versa. 

Stephanie Nielson's new book HEAVEN IS HERE is SO the perfect example of what I am talking about.  Even when she is talking about her DARKEST times(and good grief, 80% of her body was burned, she lost months out of her conscious life, her children didn't recognize her anymore and had a hard time being around her for a long time....etc....)she still communicated in a way that was uplifting.  We need to learn how to do that. *I* want to learn how to do that.:)

Baby Charlotte reminded me of deep and tender feelings I have about this life and what my purpose here is.  I won't share it all, because for each of us those things are unique and individual.  But they are important.  And they only come after we move beyond the validation.:)

Today's Challenge: Spread something positive out into the world!  Beauty, truth, upliftingness:), joy, etc!!! It feels good and is contagious!:)