Perfection

Perfection isn't possible!

Go ahead and try, but it is not going to work.

I believe perfection means different things to different people. To me it means: (on any given day and in so many words)

Having happy kids who are happy because they ate amazing organic healthy meals I cooked all day long after I cleaned the house, organized the already organized closets, exercised and felt full of energy. My cleaning of the house and exercising didn't get in the way of my quality time with the happy kids who were not only played with but taught many useful life skills through crafts and reading. Throughout the day I felt confident in my mothering and knew without an ounce of doubt that being home with my children was the correct and most fulfilling thing I could be doing with my life. After work my happy husband would come home to a dinner on the table with happy kids laughing and telling daddy what an amazingly fulfilling day it was. After having a happy bedtime with the kids bathed, read to, prayed with and taught more life skills through memorized Bible verses, Dhrumil and I would have happy talk listening fully to one another and understanding each other and go to bed feeling awed by our lives. Oh not to mention I would have had time to make a gesture that showed how fully invested I am in my friends and family.

Setting the bar a bit to high do you think?

The reality of my life does not look like and will NEVER look like what I sometimes find myself  trying to strive for... but isn't that the point? We can never have the "perfect" life and the culture we live in doesn't help.

How often have you felt bad about yourself or your day after reading Facebook statuses, seeing pins  on Pinterest, reading articles about how so and so lost all her baby weight plus 100 more and now has the best abs of her life only after THREE MONTHS after having a baby, read a blog post about how to parent the RIGHT way or see Instagram photos of smiling children behaving in a fine-dinning restaurant?

It is all too much to take in!!!  The distorted view one may already have of needing to strive for their own individual perfection is further distorted but the glaring headlines of what we SHOULD be like.

An imperfect day!

And so that is why it is important to understand that life is messy and imperfect and that is what it is meant to be. Social media can be great, but know that it is not full reality, just glimpses at some happy moments people may be having. Let us be joyful for them and not compare ourselves because we are all in different places at different times.

We will never be perfect until heaven and even then God's perfection is something beautiful and glorious and maybe not at all what we may have in mind.

So for now I will keep moving through my day rejoicing if my kids actually eat the one semi-organic meal I put before them, loving the fact that my imaginative daughter turns turkey craft projects into snow men and enjoying the warmth of my husband's chest I lay on as we watch TV at night unable to speak on word to each other out of exhaustion.