Can I have a little bit of grace?

Every day, I find myself questioning whether or not I am good at enough at any of the things that are currently my responsibility. I question whether I am doing all of the right things as a mom, a wife, a student, an employee, etc.. This morning around 0330, it dawned on me that I don’t have to be perfect at everything. There has only ever been one perfect person, and He understands and loves my imperfections. So why have I been beating myself up about them? As a mom, I think that it is hard for me to be okay with making a mistake. I mean, I have been given the responsibility of shaping my son and daughter into the people that they will be for the rest of their lives. That is a huge responsibility.

I want them to be wonderful human beings and I know that my influence will help shape that, but I also know that everyone makes mistakes. It is inevitable. Parenthood does not come with a step by step manual that you can follow day by day to make sure that you are hitting every single point perfectly. That is unrealistic and could you imagine how long that would take someone to actually come up with that? And who has the authority to actually say what the right and wrong way to parent would be? It is so disheartening when I am on social media and I see women bashing other women about the way that they are parenting their children. Unless someone is abusing or neglecting their child, I don’t think anyone has the right to say that what one person is doing is wrong. It is probably what works best for their life and we have no right to judge that.

I am a strong believer in the saying that you can’t tell me how to live my life unless you have first walked a mile in my shoes. Until you know exactly what someone is dealing with, you will never be the expert on what they should or should not be doing with their children, their marriage, their career or any other aspect of life. I find it extremely difficult to believe that I am doing every single thing in my life 100% well every single day, but I have learned to give myself a little bit of grace. I looked at a pile of clothes that I knew needed to be folded last night and I opted to read my kids two more bedtime stories instead. Normally, I would have stayed up really late folding the clothes, but I had other things that I needed to do and I will fold the clothes. There won’t be any war on laundry happening in the next few hours, so I am sure it will be fine.

I am taking this approach with every aspect of my life. I am going to prioritize the things that matter and make sure that I am accomplishing those to the best of my abilities instead of trying to do everything all at once. This approach makes the planner in me a little bit nervous, but I know that in order to be good at anything, I have to be great emotionally, mentally and physically and I know that being stressed out and exhausted about everything was actually accomplishing nothing. So, I am prepared to tackle today and I will be okay with leaving a few things undone as long as I know that the things I did complete were done to the best of my abilities. Isn’t that what life is about anyway?

Did you just body check me?

Yesterday on my lunchbreak, I decided to go to DSW and see what was new in the world of shoes. DSW is one of my happy places and after the day that I had yesterday, I needed to just go somewhere quiet, look at pretty things and relax. I had a full blown concert in my car on the way there. I am talking full out singing and choreography and I did not care who saw me. I did make a mental note to get my front windows tinted a little darker though. Anyway, I was feeling pretty great by the time that I got there.

As I am walking up, there is a mother and daughter walking up at the exact same time. It was that awkward meet at the door type of timing when you don’t actually know who should open the door, so everyone tries to go for it and then you spend a couple of milliseconds going, “you go. No you go. No really, you go.” I opened the door for them and let them walk in a head of me. The young girl says, oh thank you so much. The mom (I am assuming), says nothing, but instead proceeds to give me the up, down, up body scan. I have dubbed this the “body check”, thanks to multiple binge sessions watching Drop Dead Diva. Just to clarify, this isn’t like the hockey body check where we rammed our bodies into one another, but that is kind of what it feels like emotionally and mentally.

I was a little taken aback by this. Not because it is the first time that I have ever been body checked, but because she was so blatantly obvious when she did it. Other people do it as you walk by or while your back is to them. I guess that is the socially “appropriate” way to body check someone. I knew that she was aware that I had seen her because when she made it back up to my face, I just smiled, nodded and said “oh my gosh. I love your shoes”. She seemed startled by my response. I am not quite sure what she expected me to do, but I was not going to let her ruin my mood.

This interaction did make me think though. Why are women so fixated on what another woman’s body looks like? Like who cares? It is there body and unless you are my doctor, I don’t think it is necessary for you to give me any type of once over. Women are so hard on each other when it comes to passing judgement that it is one of the very reasons that I don’t have very many female friends. I don’t have time for the judgement or drama. I have never seen a group of men looking each other up and down, unless they are planning to fight.

So why as women are we so hard on each other? Why are we not uplifting and encouraging each other? I don’t think this lady was trying to spark some deep internal thought within me, and I don’t even know if she was trying to be malicious, but a few months ago, it probably would have bruised my self-esteem to have her look at me that way. Now, I realize that when people are nasty to you, it is a reflection of who they are and how they feel about themselves. It is not a reflection of who you are as a person. I still enjoyed my time in DSW and her daughter even asked my opinion on a pair of shoes that she was looking at.

In your interactions with others, just remember that you have no idea what they are going through in life. My parents always told me that our tongues have the power of speaking life or death into a person, so choose your words and actions wisely. I did great and did not buy any shoes yesterday, but I did pick out the pair that I am going to reward myself with when I reach my next goal. I am only 5.6lbs away from it, so stay tuned.