Don’t Give Up

    

Don’t Give Up.  This t-shirt has been traveling around the world recording the stories of pressing forward. The idea is beautifully simple – use instagram (and blogs) to authentically share with each other the various challenges we face and encourage each other in the journey. People have shared their struggles with anxiety, motherhood, body image….it’s been inspiring and incredible to see a glimpse of “not so perfect” lives by other bloggers.

So, here’s my “Don’t Give Up” story.

In one year, I lost 50% of my very small family-three of them went to be with the Lord. Losing one person is hard enough, but three? Heartbreaking. Before that, we spent months in and out of hospitals and assisted living facilities caregiving for my grandparents. My favorite place on earth burned to the ground and will never be the same again in my lifetime. We had a major theft of thousands of dollars in family property. I had to throw away countless childhood memories in trash bags, as we could no longer keep them all.  I was diagnosed with a super fun thing called “adrenal fatigue”. I had to watch my Mom go back to work full-time instead of planning her retirement after unexpectedly losing the love of her life. And a television project my husband and I developed that made it all the way up the (very-hard-to-reach) ladder of national programming- a program we had great hope in-was suddenly dropped. Not what I’d call a stellar 365 days.

It may sound a little like complaining, and it is. I’ve done quite a lot of complaining about all the things listed above.  And though that doesn’t make things better, sometimes you just have to say how sad you are at the way things are going. You may have already gone through something similar; everything seems to go wrong at once.  If you haven’t, I hate to say that you probably will.  And when you do, there is still hope.

There have been a number of times I’ve felt like giving up.  Crawling under the covers and never coming out.

But I when I think about how brief life is, and how short these trials actually are, I’m reminded of how blessed we are to be here for this short amount of time.  Ever heard “This too shall pass“? It’s true.  Things might be falling apart, but there is Someone who can put it all back together in time.  And good will somehow come from it.  I wish I could say I knew how or why or what that will look like, but part of “Don’t Give Up” is the adventure of having hope. Things can change in an instant to devastate us, but they can also change in an instant to restore us. I’m excited to see what that means in my life….and also in yours.

To share your own Don’t Give Up story, check out the link below.

 Shirt: c/o Don’t Give Up Project / Jeans: ASOS / Boots: F21 / Derby Argyle Socks in Navy: c/o CUA / Wallet: Louis Vuitton Monogram Canvas Eugenie Wallet / Wrap Bracelet: Chan Luu / Ruby Ring: Vintage (my PawPaw’s) / Thermal Shirt: Old Navy

Photos: S. Jackson

SHOP THE POST:

0