I Love Girlfriends!!

Here is an email conversation I had with my dear friend, Andrea this week (one of my kindred sisters- and I only have a handful of them- who are so much like me it's almost freeky). I am sharing it with you because it really picked me up and gave me a virtual hug. I know it's long, but if there are any of you that needed to hear this too here you go. Anyway, thank you Andrea, for your sweetness. I love you...

Angela-
I was reading your blog post today and I just want to tell you....you are not alone!!!! Everyone of us feel like that at times. I too am a perfectionist and feel like if I can't do it all and do it right then why even try. I get overwhelmed really easily and sometimes try to bite off WAY more than I can chew. Here are a couple of things that I have learned.....
1. Doing something (even 5 minutes of something) is better than doing nothing at all.
2. Take a look at what you are doing and decide if it is stress or adversity. It is stress if you have control over it and are doing it to yourself. It is adversity if it is something that is happening to you that you have no control over.
3. Pray
4. Take 15 minutes and do something for yourself....especially if you feel like you don't have time to do it.....that's when you need it the most.
5. You can't fill anyone else's bucket if yours is full of holes. You can only give what you have inside you. If you don't take the time to refill you eventually you run out and everything around you falls apart.
6. Find a friend that you can unload on. Dump it. Cry. Get a hug. Then get up and get going again. They are more than willing to shoulder that for a time. I'm sure there are other times that you have been the one who has been that friend.
7. Go to the temple. There is peace there. Sometimes in this crazy world that is the only place you can feel it. It puts things in perspective.
8. Find someone who is worse off than you and help. It doesn't have to be anything big. Sometimes it is just walking thru the grocery store and smiling at 5 people.
9. Look for something to be grateful for. At one point in my life (when I was at college) I had a roommate that made me tell her at least 1 good thing that happened that day. There was one day that I just couldn't. There wasn't anything good that happened. She finally told me "Well....at least you weren't run over by a bus." Somedays that is the only good thing that you can say. Everyone has days like that.
10. Hang in there! If you are at the bottom the only place to go is up.

Life is overwhelming. "Stuff" in life is overwhelming. When you are feeling that way Satan knows he is winning. He wants us to feel helpless and hopeless. All I can say is hang on. Things will work out. It takes time, but challenges change and we grow stronger from going through them.
You are NEVER alone!
Andrea

Andrea- You are such a sweetheart! Thank you for all the sweet advice you sent me. I am going to print it off and put it somewhere I can read it again. Girlfriends are such a blessing, to keep each other going and lift each other up. Yeah, I have been doing some really hard thinking the past week or so about my heavy load- all that I put on my own self. I look around and see other moms doing just fine doing a thousand things and keeping up and everything looks beautiful on the outside. I think to myself, if they can do it so can I. I am wonderwoman you know. J NOT!!! Aren’t they??... Just like Sis. Tanner says… We compare the eloquent things others do and say (at their best) with our worst. I am trying to remember that. Satan knows how to get each of us down, individually. I’m just trying to push him away right now. Thank you for your kind words and inspiration. It made me cry, and was exactly what I needed to hear that day. Thanks for being a friend and lifting me up. Love you, Angela

You are very welcome. I hope it helped some. I think I needed to write it out for me more than I needed to send it to you. I'm going through the same stuff right now.

We are all really good at comparing our worst to someone else's best. I think sometimes we just need to sit back and take a good hard look at what we are wanting to accomplish. There is a time and a place for everything. I've been struggling with this same thing. I teach 14 piano students, have [3 other kids] and another one on the way. I have gestational diabetes already and I'm on insulin. Pregnancy isn't an easy thing for me. I just go downhill from here on out and end with a C-section and a new baby that keeps me up all night. I had to look far enough ahead to drop a lot of things out of my schedule. [I may have to] "let someone else down" so I have enough energy for my kids and husband. The thing I keep going back to with all of it is that there is a time and a place for everything. I just have to decide if right now is the time for all my piano students, newsletters, church assignments, etc or if right now is when I need to place my family as #1 and put in the time with them. I know the answer, but still want to think I can do it all.

([...] are things that I changed to make it shorter.)
(Then she sent me that song in the next post...)