The Biggest Difference

  • 10/26/2020 09:00 AM Central
  • Natalie Rodriguez
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The Biggest Difference
Three years ago, my life was a freaking mess. My stress level was through the roof, I was yelling at my kid all the time, and my marriage was far more broken than I even realized at the time. I had started attending seminars that were billed as business teachings, but really were so much more, and had learned quite a bit about why I was struggling in life. One of the things I learned was that a husband is supposed to be the leader of the house. Maybe this is something that makes you say duh. Or maybe you believe this is an antiquated notion that has no place in this day and age. Either way, what I'm sharing in this post can still be relevant to you, pinky promise.
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Do Scary Things!

  • Oct 19, 2020 01:21 PM Central
  • Natalie Rodriguez
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Do Scary Things!
Now, I'm not talking about rollercoasters and haunted houses, though I am always up for those kind of thrills! But what I'm talking about goes much deeper. I'm talking about stepping outside of your comfort zone and doing the things you feel called to do, but also feel really really scary.

For me, that's being vulnerable. It's showing up in a place that opens me up to judgement. It's showing my human-ness, showing my pain. Because for me, feeling pain meant being weak. Obviously that's not actually true. It's just part of the human experience. But I had held that believe for as long as I can remember.
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Happy is a feeling, Love is a choice

  • Oct 12, 2020 07:40 AM Central
  • Natalie Rodriguez
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Happy is a feeling, Love is a choice
My husband did something that really made me mad yesterday. Like, I wanted to condemn him, and stomp off and slam the door kind of mad. Was it really that bad? Probably not. But that's not the point. Did I give in to my feelings? To some degree, yes. And as I stood in my bedroom scrolling my phone, this voice whispered to me, love is a choice, an action, not a feeling.

See, you can feel love from another and for another person. That much is true. But it fades, on both ends. And when it fades, you have a choice. You can either let it fade away like the daylight, or you can choose to show love. And sometimes you will be faced with the choice to show love even when you FEEL mad.
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The truth about hiding your pain...

  • Oct 4, 2020 04:57 PM Central
  • Natalie Rodriguez
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The truth about hiding your pain...
For as long as I can remember, I have been very guarded with my feelings. I don't like sharing, even with close friends and family, even with my husband, because it makes me feel vulnerable and unprotected. It opens me up, to judgement, to hurt, to abandonment. Likely, this stems back to when my mom was sick with cancer, before she passed away. I can remember going to visit my mom when she was in the hospital, in a coma, and I couldn't even form the words to tell her I loved her. I didn't want the others in the room, even my dad and sister, knowing how much I was hurting. It never occurred to me that they were feeling the same way. I only felt how visible I was to them, how on display my pain and feelings were. My dad didn't really open up with us about how he was feeling when she was sick, and actually neither did she. They both put on a brave face and tried to go about life as if all was well, and would be well forever. It wasn't until the night before my mom died that my dad had a heart to heart and finally broke down and cried. That was the first moment I realized she might not come home. She passed the next morning before I woke up.
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Finding hope...

  • 09/30/2020 08:49 AM Central
  • Natalie Rodriguez
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Finding hope...

Finding hope during a pandemic? Is that even possible? When we are separated from friends and family, encouraged to stay home as much as possible, cut out most of our sources of entertainment, it can feel a bit hopeless. It can feel like this is never going to end. And when we see others thriving, learning to bake bread, build furniture, remodel their houses, homeschool like a pro, it can make us feel obligated to do all the things, and do them all at the same time, which very quickly becomes overwhelming and can lead to anxiety, and feelings of “not enough”, and more hopelessness.

But I think finding hope during the pandemic is absolutely possible, if we know where to look and what to spend our time on. And the best part is that this can easily be translated into any situation where you are feeling hopeless and overwhelmed. You just have to know where to look.

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