Different Struggles, feel the same By: Lori Loesch


 

I am a writer. I will write my thoughts on paper.  This does not mean that I feel what I have written, everyday.  I have great days, good, bad, the worst, days.  

I love to write and I feel like I could do cartwheels, ok, maybe just fairy leaps across the meadow, for this God given gift.  I blog for Motherhoodlaterthansooner.com, and for that, I am over joyed.  More fairy leaps!  Looking at the other woman that blog for MLTS, their accomplishments are such, that I feel as though I have arrived.  To be blogging next to these intelligent, woman is, for me, almost unbelievable.  How did I get here?  The only answer I have is, by the grace of God.  It’s not me.  God leads me where I go, and it has taken years to get to this point.  Wait on the Lord, comes to mind.  I do have this fear that someone may say, “Hey, you don’t belong here!”  And they will take this away from me.  Fear;  Is a lier.  

I remember what a friend had written in my Senior Year Book, “Maybe someday we’ll write a novel together.”  Ah ha! I have always wanted to be a writer.  That was my choice.  Not the other things that I flailed at.  

I am a huge Maya Angelou fan.  From the Editors of ESSENCE, magazine,  I read her words:  “Not everything you write is going to be a masterpiece.  Not everything you cook is great, not everything you paint-but you’re trying for it.  From the moment you put the pen to paper or sit down at the piano, you’re trying for it.”  I like to keep this in the back of my mind.  There are blogs that I write, when I feel as though I was passionate about it, and I took my time to do a good job.  Then for the next blog, I have nothing, or nothing as epic as I felt my latest blog was.  

 

Today, I’d like to touch on, how we as women are very much alike.  Our struggles that we are facing in life are not the same, but every struggle is just that, a struggle.  Each one is huge for each of us.  What I’m saying is that sometimes people say that their problems are worse than mine.  That if they were in my shoes…  I’m here to say that there are no struggles more worthy of struggling, than the other.  If it touches your life, it is huge, no matter what others’ may think. 

There’s a song by the Eagles that  says, “Every fortress has its price”  How true.  Rather you live in a big house or live in a trailer, our struggles are real.  They are all worthy.  We need to work through what life throws at us, and in the best possible way. I look at people like the Kardashians’ and think that,  “they have problems, but at least they go to exotic places…”  Stop that!  Their problems follow them to gorgeous places.  I may not struggle to pay the mortgage, but I struggle.  Everyday I do what I must to keep my chin up, to feel that good spirit, everyday.  

Every good thing in our lives has come through struggling.  Nothing good comes easy.  I want to live and let others’ live.  I’ll try to walk in their shoes, and I hope they will continue to realize that not all is good in my life.  And that I’m allowed to feel worthy of my struggles.  I don’t want to hear, “I wish I had your problems.”  or  “you don’t have problems, Lori, you have hang-ups.”  If only they knew.  It’s ironic, really, that in my lifetime I have heard these comments, knowing what I have lived through.  Unless I tell, no one will know.  And when I tell, there is hell to pay, from those that manipulated me to silence.  

Shalom.