About a year ago I told Andy there was one thing I couldn’t handle. One thing that would make me go crazy.

I was in a mode of great productivity. I had been feeling really good about starting a blog, finishing the last edit of my book, and moving forward with many of my goals. I was done nursing my fourth baby, I was back to ballet class once a week, and I was feeling great. The house was tidy. Dinner was ready at 5:30 almost every night. I was researching homeschooling options to start teaching my oldest daughter at home for the first time.

So the one thing that would mess me up, the one thing that would take away that feeling of being on top of things and feeling together and whole and ready for anything would be if I got pregnant again.

I should never have said it out loud, right? I should never have said that was the one thing I couldn’t handle. Because that is the thing that happened in February. The same week I was going to launch my first book, I found out I was pregnant. For the fifth time.

Don’t get me wrong, we are happy about it. We know it is a blessing and it must be God’s will. I trust God’s timing more than anything. But with the kind of morning sickness I get, could the timing have been any crazier?

And for those of you who haven’t been to our house, it’s kinda small at 888 square feet. Yup. I didn’t leave out any numbers there. And there will soon be seven of us. Seven human beings in two bedrooms.

So these past few weeks I’ve been asking myself, as I’m running to the bathroom with my hand over my mouth, waking up in the middle of the night gagging, or explaining to my kids why I can’t do everything I usually do:  How am I going to do it? What are we going to do? And secretly, deep down, I began to believe that I was a mess. I was a total and complete mess and I was falling apart. And that meant that I was failing. I was failing in my faith in God, failing my family, failing my dreams. My book would be a failure because I had no energy to market it. My blog would fail because I hadn’t posted in a month. My first year homeschooling was a failure because we didn’t finish everything in the curriculum. I was failing as a mom and wife because all I wanted to do all day was sleep and I could barely order take-out and get it on the table for dinner. The kids’ clean laundry has been on the rocking chair in the living room for a week, and my husband just told me he is out of clean underwear.

Yesterday, after a few minutes of prayer and desperate thoughts, I started my day worrying that it would be another day of losing everything I tried to eat and achieving nothing on my to-do list. Worrying. Worrying. I was almost panicking. In the rational part of my mind, I knew that panic would only make me sicker. I knew I had to calm down.

Then suddenly, I remembered the advice that I would always give the high school girls in my Bible study: “Tell yourself, ‘Everything is going to be okay.'” Because that is sometimes the one thing we need to hear. And even if no one else says it to you, you can always tell yourself: Everything is going to be okay.

Like a fresh breeze coming in through the window, peace came over my body and something settled inside my stomach. Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. I knew it was true.

It doesn’t sound very profound, but it was exactly what I needed to hear.

I needed to take my own advice and remember that everything was going to be okay. It’s easy to tell someone who is worrying about what prom dress to buy and what their grade will be in Spanish class, “Everything is going to be okay.” But it’s harder to tell someone who is older and has something serious in front of them, like ______ (fill in the blank with your most serious problem.) But sometimes it’s exactly what we need to hear.

“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?”  –Luke 12:25

Maybe the one thing I couldn’t handle was exactly what I needed to make me humble and remind me that I need God now more than ever.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'”  –2 Corinthians 12:9

♥  Chelsea

Happy Mother’s Day