No Pressure

I work pretty well under pressure...if it's to help with someone else's problems.
Gathering resources, or baby clothes, or donations, or scanning groceries super fast during a hurricane (I was the fastest cashier at Piggly Wiggly as a teenager.  I have a little too much pride about this fact, ha!), I could do these things all day!

Why is it that it seems way easier to help "fix" someone else?

Unfortunately, that doesn't tend to be the case when dealing with my own insecurities or problems.
Sometimes I surprise myself and can just laugh things off, but typically, if I'm honest, the voices inside scream "FAILURE" when I don't live up to my own expectations.

See, I'm a perfectionist at heart and I tend to give myself unrealistic expectations.

I want to have it "all together", so when I walk into the grocery store with my little Ugandan princess' hair looking like she stuck her finger in a light socket...fail.

I want to be the mom that cooks a well-balanced meal every night for her family, so when the clock turns 5 and I haven't had a chance to even BEGIN to put something together...fail.

I want to document the early years of my children and keep scrap booking, but I've lost the motivation, time and area to make this happen right now...fail.

I want to be emotionally and mentally stable 100% of the time.  I want to be a mom who my kids can rely on, not wondering how I'm going to react to something, but being confident that I will be the mom I need to be when it all hits the fan.  And the wife Josh needs me to be when he's out of town, to confidently and gracefully hold the fort down while he's away.  And then I go and lock my best friend out of the house and have a complete breakdown...FAIL!

If I carefully look back at all of these scenarios I can see a pattern.  These are all things I expect of myself and long for others to see in me.  I highly doubt that my family would be disappointed if I allowed us to go out to eat every once in a while.  And Alethia was probably thankful for the break from the painful, time-consuming hair styling.  I don't think my kids will have to go to the nut house just because I lose my temper every once in a while and prove that I am, in fact, NOT perfect at all.  And the scrap book, and endless files of pictures and memories, well those will just have to be documented in a different way (hence the reason for this blog).

I'd actually venture to say that my kids will probably benefit from a mom who can't hold it altogether, but rather, is forced to depend on the only one who can, and a mom who makes good use of the words, "I'm sorry".

After my lock-my-friend-out-of-the-house episode, my husband ended up coming home, with open arms, looked my in the eyes, and firmly told me "it's okay to be imperfect".

I can't tell you have much I needed to hear those words.
It's not that anyone ever made me feel the need to be perfect.  That was my own downfall.  But just hearing him reiterate what I already knew was so freeing.

Take the pressure off of yourself.  Lay down those impossible expectations.

We aren't meant to be super human, just super dependent on God and willfully submitting to His refining of our selves.