The thing about life is, sometimes it’s unbelievably glamorous. Your hair has body on top and there’s a clean floor under your feet, the babysitter arrives soon, and dinner reservations are made at your favorite place. There’s a golden sunset in the evening sky and your fern is looking healthy. Your daughters bring you flowers (an arrangement of colorful weeds) from the yard, and the bedtime routine is a breeze.
But often, if we’re honest, there’s an inner fight with self to be thankful and to be joyful and to not focus on the wasp invasion in the yard, the 109-degree high for the week, the disagreement with your husband, or the ongoing battle to eat well, live well, disconnect, raise good kids, love and serve those around you, volunteer, not say bad words, floss, break bad habits, and show up to our own life every day.

And then begs the question, while standing in-between such highs/ gratitude, and lows/this living in a sin-tainted world, the question of, “what to post?” Do we show the good, the good that truly rocks us to our core because God has been gracious to us and we are living a life we’ve prayed for, or do we post the hardship knowing life can also be devastating and rocky and you feel like a fake in a world of filtered, lovely posts all the time? The questions what to post and why bother have been growing around me, especially as I’ve been reading Here, Now (unearthing peace and presence in an overconnected world) by Kate Merrick.

The thing is, even if I post a true depiction of my day, life, coffee hour musings, who cares?! Like, literally, who even stops scrolling for a millisecond to let my picture, memory, post, matter to them. After all, aren’t they logging on to post their own reels, pictures, sob story or highlight? I’m not throwing away the passwords to these accounts just yet, and there’s an aspect to it all I really enjoy, but it definitely has me processing the value of the moment and how even unshared altogether, they’re precious. Or maybe they’re really hard. Maybe they’re unforgettable in the best kind of way. Or maybe they’re the behind-the-scenes hard moments (not exactly TikTok worthy) that grow you as a person, mother, friend, wife. Maybe they’re the beautiful kind of memories where you do take pictures of the girls hugging under an arched doorway standing next to a giant blooming hibiscus with Italian blue tile underfoot. Maybe you share it, maybe you don’t, and instead you let it soak slow and steadily into your mind, vowing to remember. Maybe you jot down the memory in that little striped journal where you log memories.

Something valuable life has taught me, whether you’re in active labor and the contractions are real, or you’re experiencing some distasteful (to put it lightly) turbulence at 38,000 feet, or hunkering down while your village home rocks under the weight of a hurricane, it’s this life lesson to ride it out. This too shall pass, the good, the glamorous, as well as the challenging and the miserable parts. Ride it out is one of my life mottos. I mean, I don’t like have it on a t-shirt or anything, but it has helped me through so, so many life events. It’s a reminder to not give in to fear, and that smooth sailings are just around the corner. But in this world of posting and sharing, liking and refreshing and checking in, it’s hard to remember to ride it out because you’re preoccupied with when and how to share the moment and who might like, view, or respond to it.

So maybe I’ll be sharing more of my memories and life happenings here on this blog. Maybe I’ll be turning my phone off more so that I can soak in the glamorous moments before I rush by them to post them, or maybe I’ll be disconnecting to ride out a given storm that blows in. Who knows, really, what the right balance should be. All I know is, I want to be aware so that I live my life in such a way that I’m looking up, and keeping my eyes and heart in tune to the blessings around me, and not miss the lessons in the storm because I was too busy trying to find the right filter.