This Thing Called Adulting.

Blank blog posts are always a little intimidating for me because I never quite know what I'm going to say and type for all of you.  Writer's block is lame and it's even more ridiculous when you know damn good and well that you could spew sadness and bitterness, but opt for sunshine and rainbows and let's all find the silver lining together. And so.......here I go.......

Oh!  Before I get deep, let's all sigh at this glorious photo from my last photo shoot with Kel-Z Photography.  We found this great backdrop on Washington in Ogden, Utah and she caught me in the "Ray being silly (aka normal)" moment perfectly.  This is basically my life.  Crazy and really winging it at adulting.  You'd think I would have it figured out by now.  Nope.  But, I digress.  And so.....here I go.....

Life is crazy.  Life is beautiful. Life appears to be unpredictable in our eyes, but in the eyes of God, it is planned just as it is meant to be.  This is a challenging concept for me to swallow tonight.  In case 2015 wasn't without enough adventure, I was thrown a pretty swift curve ball to the gut this week.  I won't get in to details because it's done and I am moving forward, but I will share some musings with you that I've had in the last 48 hours.

Last week I shared some thoughts about the seasons of life and the seasons of mental health.  I also shed light on how challenging it can be for me to deal with the sudden changes and bumps in my ride of life aka adulting.  What does it all mean?  Why does shit happen?  Why do we cry like a sniveling baby with seemingly no control?  I have people tell me, "you're amazing, you're strong, you'll be OK."  I've also thought, "OK, this is super rad blog content, but I'm kind of over it so can we JUST have unicorns and rainbows and cease with the shit storms?"  But, the reality of it is my life is beautiful chaos and a long list of imperfection, but it is MY life.  I've been brewing up some new projects for 2016 and as I thought about how this little bloggy blog and my Instagram started I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the ride.  This has been a healer and a helper for me in so many ways.  But, it isn't just about me!  It's about all of you and your stories and your struggles!  We do this together and I am so grateful.

Our blessings FAR outweigh our burdens and I can feel it.  I came home tonight after going to dinner with my friend and in spite of us saying fewer words that we usually do because we were exhausted after a LONG week of adulting, we both felt better and more at peace with our realities.  I feel MUCH gratitude for the people in my life who get my dry, often dirty humor and jaded Ray outlook on life, but also see the deeply spiritual, authentic thinker and fierce lover that I am.  I could totally be a bitter bitch and hate God and never get out of the trenches of self-shaming, but I'm not doing that.  I am doing all that I can to let my brain process and cope and laugh when I feel like laughing and cry when I need to cry. My dear friend wrote an incredible blog after her son passed away and she often talked about the sunshine promises.  The fact that there is always sunshine after the storm.  That is so so so true.  However, when we are in the dark of the storm, it's sometimes hard to remember, "oh ya!  Rainbows come AFTER the rain and flowers grow better with rain and then sunshine."

When it is all said and done, we will look back on our toughest days and think, "holy crap, I was a master of self control and patience for not killing kittens and puppies while I was going through that mess."  I also know that we will look back and LAUGH when we still have the most important people in our lives because they strolled in at just the right time and didn't leave.  I have a good amount of sadness in my heart right now, but I also have an even greater amount of love and pure gratitude for my tribe of humans who, once again, are carrying me.  We CAN do hard things.  Absolutely we can.  And in the meantime, I'm going to take a nap (or in this case, go to bed before the clock strikes 2 a.m.)

The moral of the story:  Blessings are greater than burdens.  Write it down.  Embrace it.  Believe it. And I'll do the same.

Until next time, my lovelies!
-R