I was feeling beat down this week. It was as if we were leaping from activity to activity and everything else seemed to slip down and smash to smithereens on the rocks of failure below.
Surrounded by half-finished projects. Barely keeping up. Forgetting birthdays. Doing thoughtless things. Tolerating a filthy house. Missing deadlines. Running out of toilet paper.
What made it worse is that it was my fault that our schedule was crammed to the hilt. And I started to play, as I often do, the dangerous game of “Less Than/Greater Than”. I started to ask myself, “Why can’t I seem to hack it?” and “Everyone else seems to manage their time/kids/family just fine…why can’t I get it together?” and “How do they do it?”
I compare my shortcomings to every other mom I can think of that seems to have their life figured out, and I come out the other side feeling…crappy.
But then I thought back to earlier this year when a few other moms had asked me the same question, “How do you do it all?” At the time, I brushed it off and immediately wanted to give them a rundown of all my shortcomings, complete with pictures illustrating my teetering piles of unorganized to-do lists, my cracked heels and limp hair, the amount of fruit snacks my kids consume on a regular basis, and the clumps of dust bunnies hiding under my furniture.
They compared themselves to me…I compared myself to other people…and in the end, we all come out the other side feeling…crappy.
I think it is high time that we stop thinking about motherhood as a giant math equation and start thinking about it like…falling snowflakes.
All those teeny tiny snowflakes need to make it to the ground. They all have a common goal. But, there is no set path for how they need to get there. They can ride the wind to the top of a mountain or catapult down on the back of a ice chunk. And each one is uniquely designed – different and special.
My “issues” make me different and special.
Yes, I need to deal with the gigantic pile of clothes that the kids have grown out of…
And yes, I need to work on saying “yes” to everything that comes my way. But just because I don’t deal with life the same way as someone else, doesn’t make it bad or wrong. I’m just working on my end goal differently.
We all have our “issues” (I certainly do)…some are more obvious and others are well-hidden. None of us is trekking through this life perfectly. And I think that if we can just skip past all the insecurity that comes from comparing ourselves to an incomplete picture of someone else and give ourselves a much-deserved break, we would all find out that we might enjoy the journey just a little bit more.
Motherhood has nothing to do with math…and it’s time for me (for us) to start believing it…
