Do you ever have moments when you feel like you are a failure at everything you do, it will never be good enough?
You know, you stink as a parent. Especially at dinner when you are playing best/worst your daughter says the worst part of her day was when you yelled at her. But if she only knew that you only yelled at her after you warned her about twenty times to quit bouncing all over the couch. You were nauseous from the cologne your son sprayed all over himself at Dillard’s when you were looking for jeans for him. Then he got in the car with you which was overheating as you drove it around and had to turn off the air conditioning in 110 degree weather and the only window that actually unrolls in your car is the drivers side window. You were breathing in that haze of smell from who knows what and you were so hot and agitated and there were these green gaseous cologne fingers of stink in your nostrils. That when you came home to sit on the couch and she would not sit still for five seconds you nearly sort of lost it, and thought maybe I should go to my room and be alone for a minute. Except the baked potatoes were in the oven for dinner and you still had to cook the bacon and make the green salad so you just sat there while she pretended the couch was a trampoline until you were just done. DONE. Then she proceeded to tell you that she hates green salad. In fact, your pretty sure she hates everything you make for dinner.
Or how about the diet. When you are trying your hardest and nothing seems to work. Well, maybe you aren’t trying your hardest. You haven’t worked out in two weeks because you have literally been gutting every nook and cranny of your neglected house and children’s bedrooms that look clean…EXCEPT when you open that drawer next to your sons bed and realize there is junk in there probably two years old. In fact, you know it is two years old because there are the remnants of unloading his backpack in there after the last day of school in third grade and he just finished fifth grade. Yeah, and how about the remains of the two weevil body shells you found when you emptied everything out and you thought…..what in the world has happened to my life?
Or how about scheduling and money. When you were supposed to have your daughter at summer school at one sharp but the new dryer you just bought arrived right then and you were late and also sort of mad that you had to shell out $500 for a new dryer that is a super cheapo version of your old dryer.
Or how about when you have had the feeling that you should read your scriptures all day and you just don’t want to.
And then in that moment you realize that all that chagrin is the adversary working so hard against all your efforts no matter how big or how small they are, the fact is you are trying. Not only are you trying you are doing your best at that moment.
So then you think well…
I scrubbed the bathroom
I washed Ellie’s bedding
The dishes were loaded and unloaded
You wiped the counters
The floor was swept
You made lunch AND dinner
You threw away FOUR FULL bags of garbage from cleaning out Aydan and Ellie’s room
You donated FIVE bags to Goodwill and actually dropped them off
You saved one bag of boy clothes for a friend to be delivered in the morning
You woke up at five thirty AM to take your son to swim team
You had your kids try on every stitch of clothing to see what fit and what did not
You taxied your baby girl to summer music camp
You took your son shopping and got him three outfits for summer and a pair of jeans for school
You used your coupon and scored seven pairs of jeans for your daughter which were also 30% off the clearance price making them about $4 each pair….and since the dress code at school next year is pants only you felt pretty awesome about that
You took your son to get an ice cream cone
You actually tried to fix your dryer yourself, had someone else come try to fix it to no avail, you went to the appliance store and picked out the best value dryer that would work for your family because let’s face it you were tired of hanging your clothes to dry in the garage and it was a tad strange when you had to hang up all your underwear…..and you know that if that had happened four years ago it would have reduced you to a crying puddle sitting on your kitchen floor but now your a girl that just gets it done.
And the reasons you worry about your weight are stupid and don’t really matter actually because your best is good enough.
And who cares if you have twenty run on sentences in this blog post.
So it is day in and day out there is the good, the bad, and the ugly all rolled into one. Mostly good though because you have good kids that help clean up their rooms and tidy the house. A son who planned the lesson for Family Home Evening, a daughter who really just wanted a snuggle, and you are happy with this little life. You are grateful for this little life. You are grateful you can afford to buy the dryer and that you had food to feed your kids. You are grateful that you have a body that you can work to the bone cleaning and it just keeps going. You are grateful and you are happy because you have so many blessings and you know that Heavenly Father is happy with your best efforts. I mean he doesn’t care if you didn’t bother to put on any make-up today because this is just how he made you and he doesn’t make any mistakes. You are happy because you know there is absolutely NOTHING to feel bad about when you have worked hard all day and none of those things are true you were telling yourself earlier. That actually your pretty OK. So maybe now you will go read your scriptures.
XOXO- The Sunny D
