Fake it ‘till You Make it

{Photo courtesy of here}

I wish I had a fix for every broken heart.  I wish I had a solution for every problem.  I wish I had an answer for every question.  But I don’t.

Sometimes, life is downright dreadful.

But there is always hope, hope for others and hope for yourself.  There is always forgiveness, for others and yourself.

One thing I have learned is that each moment (not just once each day) I am faced with a choice.  I have to choose to eat like a normal person.  I have to choose to be thankful for what I am given.  I have to choose to take care of myself.  I have to choose to tell myself that I am beautiful and worthy when I look in the mirror.

I have to choose to do what I believe is right even if it doesn’t “feel” good.  Most of the time, I feel like a lazy, fat failure who can’t do anything right.  But just because I “feel” that way doesn’t mean that those thoughts should dictate my actions.  Eventually, I hope my choices will come from my heart and it will become more second nature.

But, until then, I live by a phrase you’ve probably heard before, “Fake it ‘till you make it”.

If you are sitting here right now and you don’t feel like smiling, just fake a smile and keep it there until it becomes real...keep trying...don't stop smiling...think of a joke, funny story, something!  How about "knock, knock" who's there? Me!  Okay...that wasn't funny.  How about this...

 

 

 

Nine times out of ten it will work.

However, it doesn’t always work.  And, well, sometimes you don’t have to change how you feel.  If I had tried this practice last Friday, it wouldn’t have worked.  I didn’t want to try to change my sadness, though.  I wanted to mourn the loss of the innocent lives.  It is the same when I think about all the aborted babies and poor mothers who have had abortions.  I let myself feel sad for these reasons because it inspires me to pray and to do whatever I can to help.

My amazing husband has a very good analogy for coping with life during difficult times.  Have you ever put together a 1000 piece puzzle of a landscape?  If you have, then you know the sky can be very frustrating to figure out.  All the pieces look the same and you can’t tell where they go just by looking at them.  Often times, the sky pieces don’t make sense until the end.  And when the whole puzzle is completely finished, then the whole picture becomes clear.  Just so, sometimes things happen in our lives that look an awful lot like a sky puzzle piece.  We can’t tell what it is or what purpose it has.  We cannot understand it by itself.  And we probably won’t be able to make sense of it until much much later.  It is hard to remember that it will be a beautiful picture in the end, more beautiful than we can even imagine.

Take care.