In all honestly, I’m not 100% bought in on religion. Try as I did for years, I could not drudge up the passion for God that I felt I should have to identify as Christian. I mostly lean towards Agnostic. But there are times when I feel like someone must be running the show. The way that miracles can just come out of nowhere or you can be thrown into so many situations and your limits are tested, pushing you past what you thought you could originally handle. The day this post was originally scheduled to publish, I had one of those days that just rocked me. August 11th, 2016 marked 731 glorious days that my two little blessings have been on this Earth; it was James and Emma’s 2nd birthday. And I was so prepared to celebrate and dedicate the day to this wonderful beings. I wanted to take in everything they had to offer and just fill myself with appreciation for them.

But at 5am on August 11th, after three days of pain and three hours in the emergency room, my husband Ryan was scheduled for an emergency appendectomy. My focus immediately shifted towards my husband’s health and making sure he was going to be okay. If you have an experience with an appendectomy, you know it’s pretty common and actually an outpatient procedure. And the surgery did go well, he’s healing as expected, and he went back to work after about a week. But something about that experience completely worn me thin. Spending the day tending to my husband, trying to quickly run errands during nap time, and completely forgetting to do anything in celebration of my babies just stuck with me. The way that I can’t seem to get back into a routine, it’s almost as if I had surgery. Heck, there is still a box of gluten-free funfetti cupcake mix earmarked for the kids in the pantry. During the crazy summer we’ve had, I’ve learned two things about myself. (1) I handle emergencies like a pro, and (2) After everything has been handled I fall to pieces that seem to then scatter in the wind, making it impossible for me to put myself back together. And I know I’m being tested to that I can learn how to build myself back up, quicker and stronger than before. Sometimes it makes me think there really has to be a God who gives me these situations as a test of my spirit, to make me a better person in the end.

And so we circle back to the blog and how this all ties in. My last post before this little hiatus was about Finding Time For Self Care with Kids. And sometimes self care means putting your creativity to the side while you slowly pull yourself together. I’ve missed being able to have a conversation with y’all and hopefully I’ll be back on a regular basis to share some important lessons, some random fun facts, and everything in between.