Cootie Catchers. M.A.S.H. games. Choose your own adventures.

Most of us remember these silly junior high games. Sitting with girlfriends dreaming up our future lives. Of course, marriage and kids were a given. A “perfect” existence our destiny.

What if life dealt us a different hand?

Growing up whenever I whined, “It’s not fair!”, my dad responded: “The fair’s on 38th street” (for you non-Hoosiers, that’s the exact location of the Indiana State Fair…).

Today’s guest, Melanie Dale, had life not turn out exactly as she’d like. She has every right to scream: “It’s not fair”.  Most likely you have your own reasons to scream. Melanie would probably encourage you to let it out!

In this episode, Melanie, shares her struggles with infertility, painful endometriosis, and debilitating depression. She encourages us to bring all our emotions to God. To be grace bearers to one another. And to “count the wins”. Melanie also gives great ideas for cultivating the funny in your home.

Her latest book is, “It’s Not Fair: Learning to Love the Life You Didn’t Choose”. It’s hilariously written and yet so comforting and real. And I give her bonus points for the fantastic movie quotes starting off each chapter.

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Connect with Melanie:

  

What we chat about:

* Her five year infertility battle and her three children from three different continents.

* Using humor to cope with daily trials.

* Being free to release all the emotions and realize laughter may come out as well.

* The importance of finding professional help.

* Identifying the “grace bearers” in your life (and to be “grace bearers”)

* Counting the wins to keep yourself from going cynical.

* Melanie’s season of deep depression and her low point of wanting to end it all.

* How she cultivates the funny in her home to combat depression.

* Permission to press pause on the hard thing and enjoy life.

* Mourning your expectations before enjoying your actual life.

Links Mentioned:

* “It’s Not Fair: Learning to Love the Life You Didn’t Choose”  **

* “Women Are Scary : The Totally Awkward Adventure of Finding Mom Friends”**

How to listen to the podcast:

1.Listen on the blog. Click through to GodCenteredMom.com and click the play button at the beginning of this post.

2. Listen on your smartphone, iPad or iPod Touch – There are a lot of great podcasting apps. Apple has a free one (that I mentioned) in the app store, there is also one called Downcast. It allows you to search for shows, subscribe to them and even speed up the audio. If you don’t have an iDevice, you can listen via Stitcher.

3. Subscribe to the Podcast – access the podcast in iTunes (