{Thursday Nights 2/25/16} Negative Thoughts and Pot Stickers

I’m coming off a long week of being stuck indoors with sick kids and I like to think that’s why I’ve had a rough couple days emotionally. Feeling trapped has a tendency to mess with my mental state. On the flip side, being stuck at home more has also given me the chance to get more organized and I finally put into place some routine/schedule things I’ve been feeling inspired to do with the kids.

So in a weird way this has been a week of extreme motherly highs and extreme motherly lows. Highs in the sense that I feel really really good (like rock star good) about our new routine/schedule, and I’ve been killing it with getting and keeping the house more organized which makes me SUPER happy, yet the highs have been intermittent with debilitating lows as I’ve also been dealing with an overwhelming sense of worthlessness, inadequacy and self loathing. WHAT??? How can both of those things be happening in me at the same time?

Seriously, what is going on? Actually, I know what’s going on, which makes it even more frustrating when I find myself having such a hard time shaking the negativity.

Here’s the deal, basically Satan is ticked at me. He’s ticked that I am trying my darndest to raise God serving children. He’s ticked I’m trying to nurture/improve my marriage, He’s ticked I’m trying to get more organized and set and accomplish goals that will allow me to devote more time to serving others, He’s ticked I’m trying to get smarter about the way I blog so I can make and contribute money to help pay for young people to serve missions for our church so more people can learn about God and His plan for his children. Basically me getting myself more “together” is all kinds of upsetting to him. And, let me just say, I HATE that he knows everything about me and just what insecurity buttons to push to get me doubting my awesomeness.

Even tonight as I sat down to type this post Satan was totally in my head, “Why do you even do these posts?” “You don’t have anything of value to share with’ anyone, especially today.” “You don’t even know what the heck you are doing with blogging. You should probably just quit.” ect. ect. ect.

I kept thinking, “I need to replace these negative thoughts with positive ones,” but I was having a really hard time thinking of positive things about myself. Sim was putting the kids to bed and I thought about going and asking him to please tell me two things that are great about me, but I didn’t want to risk kids getting out of bed or any of that so I just sat here and tried to think of what I could do….embarrassingly enough I thought, well maybe I should post to my church ladies Facebook page and say something like. “Um, as pathetic as this is going to sound, could one or two of you please tell me one or two things you think are worthwhile about me? I’m having a really hard time fighting some negative thoughts right now. Sorry to be so needy…”

I decided that would just be WAY to embarrassing so I thought, hmm, maybe I should call my mom and see if she can tell me a couple things that are good about me. (for the record I have never done anything like that before…that speaks to just how “in the depths” I was tonight.”

I dialed her number with tears running down my cheeks, hoping she would answer and that she would know just what to say.

Well, she didn’t answer, So I tried to imagine what she would say to me if she did.

And guess what people! There are good things about me. I am freaking awesome. I’m a good person who loves people and I have skills. Mothering Skills, Cooking Skills, Nunchaku Skills……

Anywho, my whole point in typing this out tonight, besides completely embarrassing myself (I’m sure I’ll regret this in the morning) is that tonight I had an ah-ha moment, and here it is:

At any given moment there are about a million amazing women out there dealing with the same inadequate, self-loathing, insecure thoughts/feelings I’ve had this week. What would happen if at least once a day I purposely sought out to tell a women something sincerely amazing about herself. Something I admire and appreciate about her. And what if I also did the same for myself.

I really do feel like women in general, especially woman who are mothers or have influence on young children are under a deliberate, hand crafted kind of attack from Satan, and more often then not he does the most damage by getting them/us to doubt their/our worth. His favorite battlefield is the one in our mind.

I’ve had my share of battles and I’m sure I’m not alone. Let’s not wait for our friends to post pleas for compliments on Facebook. Let’s tell the people in our life, especially woman and young girls how incredible they are and why.

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Well, this post ended up going in a completely different way then I expected. If you’re still reading and want to see what we had for dinner tonight and how our day was, here are some pics.

 We had pot stickers and Chicken and Green Bean Curry. (I used mushrooms and zucchini instead of green beans though, It was yummy. I was making the pot stickers while dad helped Thatch with homework.

I also tried a recipe I’ve been dying to make. It calls for a double broiler, I don’t have one so this is how we double broil. It works.

Charlotte who is finally better from her week long sickness, was so happy to go to preschool today and had a play date with her friend Alivia after school. They had cute little mouse faces painted on at preschool today.

Trever is also finally feeling better, YAY! After an epically terrible day with him yesterday I was so happy to see him smiling and not throwing a million fits today. His favorite part of the day was “helping” to cut up the veggies for dinner. I gave him the ends of the zucchini and he cut them and put them in a bowl and kept doing it over and over. Put them in the pot, take them out and cut them again, put them in the pot, take them out and cut them again. It was awesome. He stayed interested in that little game for almost an hour. Thank you Zucchini ends, you’re my new best friends.

Also, you might be a little nap-time crazy if you not only have a fan going inside your kids room to muffle out noise but you also put a second one outside their door in the hallway just in case. My motto is protect nap time at all costs.

Tonight I took a friend dinner who had a baby last week. That baby is SO CUTE!!! Holy cow, I might have to go steal her, seriously she could not be more precious. I couldn’t make myself stop holding her or stop talking to her mommy so by the time I got home the family was almost done eating because Sim and Thatch have to leave for practice at 5:45. The boys loved dinner and were lined up at the rice cooker ready for seconds.

We’re really serious about our rice around here. They were actually doing a little pushing and shoving worried one or the other was going to take more than there share. How adorable.

Keep it Real!!!

Maria