Beautiful Disaster

The truth is

My life is wonderful

True Love

Healthy darling daughters

Rarely if ever

Do we worry about wants

Still

At times I feel bound

Or rather

I allow myself to be bound

Wrapped in feelings of inadequacy

I’m not saying they spring up often

I’m not saying that they don’t

Whenever they do

They are formidable

My children

Don’t eat enough kale

They don’t eat any kale

I don’t play with them enough

I haven’t done Montessori anything

I must teach them more

Do better

Be better

Make a list

Get organized

Have more things made of felt

When these feeling come

I cant help but drift back

To my somewhat lengthy

Scriptural roots

Conviction

A genuine need for change

Oft times a repentant need

For change

Comes without shame or guilt

It comes instead

With encouragement

A way through

If shame and guilt are your motivators

Then what you’re really dealing with

Is fear

And

You may recall

If you were ever churched

God has not given us

A spirit of fear

But a spirit of Love and of Power

And a sound mind

So if your anxieties about anything

Are keeping you up at nights

There is no Pinterest list to save you

What you really need

Is Freedom

Freedom from fear

The internet sort of excels

At fear nowadays

So unplug it

Grab hold of the thing

That will slip you from fears sticky fingers

Truth

“Then you will know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free.”

The truth is

My life isn’t perfect

Neither is yours

Perfection

Luckily

Isn’t required

There are definite areas

That beg for improvement

And that’s fine

Improvement happens over time

It happens in reality

Far away from perilous perfection

And shiny saccharine selfies

That exist more to convince ourselves

Than anyone else

How great we feel

About absolutely everything

Upon writing this

I should be sleeping

I just came off a rather brutal two day stomach flu

Today

Was my first day out of bed

My three year old has a cough that won’t give up

And I haven’t had on real clothes or left the house

In three days

I went onto the porch briefly

Between barfing

Hoping the cold air would clear the crippling nausea

It didn’t work like I hoped

The first day

I was falling ill

But didn’t know it yet

I emerged from the bedroom in the morning

Disheveled and un-showered

Feeling a little “off”

My Love came to hug me and exclaimed

“Look how beautiful you look!’

I thought he was kidding at first

He wasn’t

After a lengthy hug

I drifted to the bathroom mirror

Hoping to catch a glimpse of what he saw

And I saw it

The truth

I’m tired

A little worn around the eyes

Heavier

Older

I’m well loved

The Mother of his children

My lashes are still dark

My mouth is still curvy

And a little crooked

Just like he always says

He loves

So often I miss my own beauty

Because I look for it in the wrong places

In the past

In magazines

In words that were said

By someone who needed me to be small

Someone else’s Instagram account

When the truth of who I am

My real Beauty

Is reflected back to me

In the eyes of the ones I love

Like the Moon i adore

I’m a satellite only

For the unbearable light

Of being cherished

And that’s something

In and of itself

My life isn’t perfect

My kids eat food

They’ll learn all the things

In time

The things I can do better

I’ll do better

My beauty

Or lack thereof

Doesn’t really matter

And it doesn’t belong to me anyway

All the things that matter

Happen outside of fear

They happen

When I am just doing my day to day life

Contented

Exhausted

Full

Determined

So if you’re reading this

Mother or not

When you should be sleeping

Tell fear

To find another fool

See yourself as you really are

Loved

Free from the bondage

Of perfection and shame

Beautiful

By yourself

Or buried in babies

And that’s the truth