Have you heard the quote, “If You’re on the Right Path it Will Always be Uphill”? I’ve found it to be so true, but uphill doesn’t have to mean it’s hopeless.

father and son

When we decided to open up to all and be totally real, the good, the bad, the ugly, and really start sharing more about food, life and love everything got worse. Bloggers got mean, “don’t mix personal with food, who wants to hear about you being a mom, and your husband going through unemployment”.

Some readers did the same, “your food and photos are disgusting, and we don’t care about your stories”.

On top of all of that, cade WAS unemployed still.

I had just had our second child after the hardest pregnancy out of them all and she was colicky, had food allergies we didn’t know about yet and acid reflux so she screamed and cried ALL THE TIME. 👶🏼

Image from Mormonchannel.org

You Know it’s Bad When it’s a Shower Cry

I remember standing in the shower and completely falling apart, sobbing like a baby. 😭

I couldn’t do this.

I couldn’t stay hopeful when we’d been without a job for a year already.

I couldn’t go one more sleepless night or one more 12 hour day of a baby screaming inconsolably, and I certainly couldn’t do this blog thing.

I stood there and cried and prayed for miracles. 😭😭

🚿 I wish I could say that peace washed over me, or I got out and cade was there with good news or heck, that the baby was sleeping, but instead, Cade was downstairs after a job interview had called to say he was overqualified (which feels worse than under, trust me) and he was holding a crying baby with our older daughter crying over who knows what.

Things Didn’t Get Better That Day

Things didn’t get better that day, week or even for another year, but I pushed forward on faith and hope because I’d felt it, literally felt called to motherhood, blogging and this life.

I didn’t have the answers but I knew there was a plan, so every day I got up and said my prayers, read my scriptures and promised that even if life sucked in some areas, and it did, that I wouldn’t stop believing that there is a God and that one day these trials would turn out to have been blessings in disguise.

And they have.

They changed Cade and I forever.

Trials Don’t Mean You Aren’t Good Enough, or are Being Punished or Forgotten

Trials don’t mean you aren’t good enough or are being punished or forgotten.

Hurting means that you’re becoming who you are meant to be.

You can’t rise to greatness without pushing up from the ground first.

Trials mean you’re stronger and can become more.

The hard part isn’t enduring a trial. Either way you have to keep living. You should keep living. The hard part is finding the hope and peace to not just survive but thrive in a trial.