This week, I was reminded how thankful I am to have Jeff as my husband. I swear that this week was the craziest week of my summer. It feels like I'm in the middle of midterms in a semester, but I'm not even taking classes this summer, I'm just working up 20-30 hours a week. But this week was much different than my typical relaxing summer week.

Monday morning started a 6-day conference at work. I had to be there at 7am and didn't get home until after 4pm.  I worked 9 hours, then came home and started dinner. I was making this yummy butternut squash mac & cheese and curly fries. It was going great. I was going to work on it for half an hour before picking Jeff up from work at 5pm. 4:50 came, I was peeling the butternut squash, and slice, I peeled the top of my finger, including half my fingernail, right off. Within 3 seconds, it was bleeding more than I have bled since 1st grade when I cut my ankle and rushed to the emergency room. Jeff wasn't home, so I tried not to get blood everywhere and wrapped it with paper towels. 30 seconds later, I had bled through the paper towels and had to grab 4 more to wrap it so I could go pick up Jeff from work. Luckily I had Jeff's car so I didn't have to drive stick-shift with only one hand, so I was able to get to Jeff's work. We returned home and Jeff had to finish dinner. I tried to help but I couldn't really do anything more than stir things with my still-useable hand. As soon as dinner made it into the oven, Jeff ran to the grocery store to by bandaids and gauze - we didn't have a single bandaid in our apartment! We were able to wrap it up. I have realized that it is really hard to do things without a thumb. Because it hurts so bad, I can't use it to do anything, and it has been really inconvenient. For the rest of the week, dinner has been hard to prepare and moving stuff around at work has been difficult due to the lack of a functioning thumb.

Every day I have worked 8-9 hours at work and get home at 4 to try and make dinner for Jeff. Meanwhile, we have had errands to run, cleaning to do, thank you cards to write, phone calls to make, laundry to fold, decisions to be made, and dishes to do. To top it off, we got our gym pass this week so we have been cutting out an hour of our evening to be able to work out.

This week would have been really hard without Jeff. He has been so helpful with dinner, dishes, laundry, and especially helpful with wrapping my finger up for me. I didn't think this week would be so stressful, but when it became so stressful I had a wonderful husband by my side to help me get through it.

I'm including a wedding photo because I'm especially grateful for this man who is by my side and loves my weirdness and helps my through my stressful weeks.

love,

SK

In the LDS church we have something called Relief Society, that is basically what we call the group of adult women. During the 3rd hour of our weekly church meeting on Sunday, the Relief Society meets to discuss gospel principles, our life, and my personal favorite, be a support system for the other women there with us. In my opinion, the Relief Society is just that, a society that provides relief for one another, and I love it and I love the women in it.

Anyways, in Relief Society this week the incredible woman, Kenzi, who was teaching the lesson stood up and after a few sentences, said "It's Okay to be You", and I knew right away that this lesson was going to hit close to home.

Women struggle, a lot. We compare ourselves to what we see on the internet, to the other women around us, our friends, and we hold ourselves to a really high standard that sometimes makes us feel like we aren't good enough. And like Kenzi said, it is something that we women need to hear.

Women, social media can destroy someone. It can destroy you if you let it. Those other moms or wives don't post a picture of themselves with their hair in a bun, wearing sweatpants, no makeup, with baby spit-up spilled all the way down their 10-year-old t-shirt. Instead, they will climb into bed and post a picture on Instagram of themselves during those 30 seconds 2 weeks ago that they looked great and had their life together. But we see those pictures and compare our messy lives to what appears to be their perfect life. However, I'm willing to put money on the fact that you could go knock on their door and their baby would be screaming, the dishes wouldn't be done, and they probably haven't showered for the day. Their lives aren't perfect, and if we sit and believe that it is, we will never be okay with ourselves.

Sometimes, we are in those shoes. I have so been there. A day goes terribly wrong, so I post a picture from my wedding on Instagram, or write a fun blog post to make people thing that I've got it all together. But you can believe that I ate 4 bowls of ice cream that day and watched one too many episodes on Netflix (I've included a picture below to prove that this is real, and me and Madison and I do this all the time). My day wasn't perfect, and neither was yours, and that's okay.

We don't need to have our crap together every single day. We don't even need to have it all together one day. But try something - in the morning when you wake up, give yourself one thing that you want to do. It could be showering, it could be making the bed, it could be cleaning the dishes, whatever you want. And when you have completed that one thing, be happy. You can go to bed that night knowing that you completed your one task, and you can be so proud of yourself, and okay to be you. 

I smile when I see other women in the grocery store that are in sweats, because it reminds me that I'm not the only one struggling to get things done every day. I mean lets be honest, if I had time to go to the grocery store, I didn't have time to get dressed that morning, haha! You can't have it all!

I've probably said enough for one post, but women I plead with you, stop thinking that you aren't good enough. You are great, you are irreplaceable, and you are you. You is absolutely outstanding, no matter how much makeup you put on or if top ramen is for dinner tonight. You are loved, just the same. 

It's okay to be you.

love,

SK