Making peace with imperfection.

I was looking for a new book last weekend, and found one written by Jill Savage called "No more perfect moms". It's just what I needed.

There are a lot of things I've done as a wife and mother that I'm very proud of: Refusing pain medicine while I'm in labor to spare the baby of side effects (all 3 times), never giving any of my babies formula, never asking my husband to get up in the middle of the night with a crying baby, keeping my kids immunity strong (neither one of my boys have needed antibiotics), cooking meals from scratch, and homeschooling. I'm very proud of those things.

To pretend I have only done things I'm proud of would be an outright lie. There are at least 10x as many things I'm embarrassed of doing, than things I'm proud of. But it's amazing how those things never come up in conversation. Things like: Sweeping the floor in the living room and finding a perfectly petrified slice of pizza under the couch, getting ready to leave the house and my hair wouldn't fix-so I had a toddler style tantrum and threw every single bottle from the sink into the bathtub, giving my kids a bath most everyday but only washing their hair once a week because I detest the screaming and sputtering, losing my car keys and deciding to just stay home rather than looking for them, bribing my 4 year old to lay down for a nap by promising to bring him the iPad in 20 minutes-when I know he will be asleep in 15. Possibly the most humbling: we replaced all the windows in our house 5 years ago and I have never washed even one of those windows. Not even once. I can hardly tell if it's sunny or overcast outside.

There are a lot of days where being a mother feels like sprinting on a treadmill. I'm moving as fast as I can, using all of my energy, and not really going anywhere at all. I can work all day long and collapse into a bed (that was never made) at the end of the day and think of all the things I did wrong, and feel like an ultimate failure. 

One of the points of the book that really stuck with me was showing the difference in perfection, and excellence. Perfection is illogical, impossible, and quite irrational. Excellence is simply doing the best you possibly can, and forgiving yourself for missing the mark even when you have given it your best try.

I may never iron all of my family's clothing like Brittani, be a homeschool rock star like Brooke, spend as much time as Mandy working at the church, have a house beautifully decorated like Janelle's, or be as patient as Amy with hyper and messy boys. I'm for sure never going to have hair that looks as good as Tiffany's. I'm finally ok with that.

(This is an actual picture of the condition of my kids playroom this morning. You can't really see the crushed cereal because it's the same color as the carpet.)

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