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When you’re in the throes of motherhood and you can’t see an end in sight, sometimes you feel as though you’ll never make it out of the trenches with a shred of sanity.

You’re pretty sure you’ll be changing diapers, waking up at all hours of the night, and cooking food your kids won’t eat for the rest. of. your. life.

But then one day you wake up and it hits you. You’ve made it through.

The blankie she used to drag literally everywhere, now sits folded neatly on her bed.

The thumb you were convinced she’d always suck has graduated from self-soother to its intended opposable purpose.

Every word he used to perfectly mispronounce, the ones you never wanted to correct, now leave his lips as though he’d never said them wrong in the first place.

“Mommy can you help me” has been replaced with “Mom, I can do it.”

The days of diapers have long since been replaced with big kid undies.

Everyone eats the meals you make.

And you wake up sans dark circles feeling well-rested because no one wakes you anymore to chase away monsters, rub away growing pains, fetch a drink, or snuggle because they “just want ya mama.”

It’s hard to see from the trenches, when two days feel more like two years, but one day you’ll turn a corner. You’ll wake up and by the grace of God, you’ll have made it through.

And in that moment, you’ll feel a little sad as you look back fondly, barely remembering the struggle.

But you’ll also be so filled with joy as you look to what’s ahead with those precious memories tucked away in your heart.

This post was originally published on Faith Family & Beef

 

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Terryn Drieling

Hi, I’m Terryn. I grew up on a northeast Nebraska feed yard with pens of cattle as my backyard. That is where I fell in love with raising beef. So when I went off to college in the big city of Lincoln, NE, I focused my studies on animal science with the goal of one day becoming a feed yard manager. While at UNL, I met my never-boring, always-entertaining husband, Tom. After earning my degree in 2006, we moved out to the panhandle of Nebraska where I took a job on the animal health crew of a local feed yard. I loved my job, so-much-so that I would argue I never actually worked. Over the course of the next seven years Tom and I got married, welcomed a son and then a daughter, and I continued loving my life and career. I couldn’t imagine life any other way. But then, God inserted a plot twist into our story… And I am so thankful for His twist because I am happier than I have ever been doing things I never thought I’d do. I am now a stay-at-home-mom and ranch wife who has discovered new passions in photography and writing/blogging. Faith Family & Beef where I share my story as a wife, mother, lover of coffee, and dabbler in photography – living in the Nebraska Sandhills, bringing up a family while raising beef. Follow along on my blog: https://www.faithfamilyandbeef.com/

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