Oh dear – one more purity Event

27
Feb

A Christian camp, a place where I worked in my younger years, is hosting a purity retreat.

When I read this news, I groaned.

“What are they going to teach those students?” I said to myself, “And how long will it take them to undo it?”

As someone who was on the early edge of the big evangelical push to churn out curriculum, trinkets, marketing and events surrounding purity and abstinence, I speak as an observer a few steps removed from the hard-core movement. But I remember accountability partners, vague discussion of boundaries, the concern about being a stumbling block for the males of the world, the guilt over “going too far”, and the way it was stressed that sex should be confined to marriage.

At a purity retreat, there will most likely be a challenge to use your mind over your emotions (although I’m sure they’re not above drawing on emotions to motivate the participants), pledges of future behavior, repentance over past thoughts or behavior, and they might even give out some small purity token — a souvenir of significance to mark the weekend and the new commitments people made.

If you are not familiar with the purity/modesty rules philosophy, it goes like this:

Sex before marriage is wrong for lots of reasons.

Foremost of those reasons is that the Bible says you are supposed to reserve sex for marriage.

If you do not reserve sex for marriage, you are messing up God’s plan.

When you mess up God’s plan (a.k.a. ‘the two shall become one’,’ a woman shall leave her mother and a man shall leave his home’, etc.) you give away parts of your heart to each partner until you have but a tiny scrap of a heart left. You are unable to give yourself fully to your eventual spouse (because everyone gets married, you see), you end up with lots of baggage and assumed regrets, and you mess up your spouse’s life because your spouse was a good person and saved sex for marriage.

If you have sex before marriage, you are guilty, blemished, and broken in God’s eyes. Sure, you can be forgiven — there’s even discussion of having your virginity reclaimed — but you’re still going to have to sort out the consequences of your sin, which may play out for the rest of your life.

This also goes for other sexual expression, because the Bible says to stay away from sexual immorality. In some circles it includes kissing and holding hands. Yes. Some people reserve kissing and/or holding hands until they are engaged or married.

I’m serious, and it is a deeply held conviction for them, one they are willing to stick with and in doing so frequently feel misunderstood and judged.

And superior, don’t forget superior.

So if you think Christian culture is quiet about sex, you’d be wrong…except that the thing students hear while they are growing up is that if you wait until marriage it will automatically be blessed, fantastic, fun and natural. You’ll take to it like a fish in water, even if you haven’t ever kissed a person and have, up to that point, convinced yourself that all sexual expression is negative and ridden with guilt and shame.

Good luck with that.

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Alongside the purity culture of evangelicalism is the modesty culture.

During her time at a Christian college, a close friend of mine was brought in to have a long talk with her resident assistant. The reason? It was because she wore a sports bra without a t-shirt while playing volleyball outside on a hot autumn day.

This is pretty common.

Girls are told what kind of swim suits they can wear to church events that involve beaches or water, and shirts and skirts are monitored for length and coverage.

Modesty can be subtly damaging because it is the preamble to sexual purity. If you are immodest, it follows that you are also impure. And if you’re not the one who is impure, you’re making a bunch of other people impure, because you’re causing them to stumble.

So make sure you cover up those mazongas because you shouldn’t “think of yourself more highly than you ought but consider others better than yourselves.” (This is an often-used morphing of Romans 12:3 and Philippians 2:3, both letters from the Apostle Paul.) First of all, who are you to think you look that good anyway, and plus, when you choose clothing you should be thinking of the ways you could be causing your Christian brothers into sin by wearing that spaghetti strap tank top.

(I’m 99% sure that boys are not taught to cover up for their Christian sisters.)

The damage to our young men and women in this is profound.

It makes our young men into mindless primates with little will of their own, held captive by their urges, which they cannot control.

It makes our young women into temptresses who, by nature of their female-ness, lead all men into impure thoughts and impure actions for which they cannot be held accountable. It’s the whole virgin vs. vixen idea of a bygone era when women were presumed to be either wholly sterile in their total lack of sexual desire or appeal, or they were women of low moral character who were ultimately subhuman, meant to be used and tossed aside like an old tissue.

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There is something amiss with the evangelical obsession with sex, either having it or not having it.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s a good idea for unmarried people to sleep around. I’m all about self-respect and I’m a big fan of modesty because sometimes the reason for the lack of it is to gain self-worth from our boobies (or other parts…and yes, I just wrote “boobies.” Focus, people, focus. Stay with me.) When I consider this concern for modesty and the purity culture it spawned, it’s a huge sweater of interlocking stitches. When you pick at one, it turns out that it’s connected to the stitches around it.

Consider: The burden of modesty is set on girls, since boys’ urges are somehow too uncontrollable and they can’t reasonably be asked to take much responsibility in it. Heck, they can’t even look at a bikini without lusting, much less a girl wearing that bikini. Therefore, the responsibility lies with females. But females, by nature of being female, are lesser, the argument goes. And since they are lesser, they can’t be asked to handle such a potentially dangerous mission. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is to enact a no-touch, no-look policy…Or enlist the “leadership” of the girl’s father, and return to the days of dowries and arranged marriages, when the girl was a commodity to be traded.

It follows that since a female form, simply by existing, causes sin in the males who observe the female-ness. The curve of a breast is inherently sexual, rather than just being an added bit of skin over the pectoral muscles. The female body, it follows, must be sinful, otherwise why would it raise such chemical, physiological reactions? Plus, it was Eve who corrupted Adam by offering him the apple so it follows that it is in the nature of women to lead others into sin.

See what I mean about the stitches being interlocked? You can’t pick one stitch without it unravelling the ones around it.

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There are people having conversations about these assumptions, these categorical dismissals of the individuality of each person, the choices placed before us and the attitudes about the worthiness of women. They are talking about a woman’s ownership over her own body, and the dastardly connection between purity culture and it’s potential to tumble down the rabbit hole of making a woman responsible for her own sexual harassment, or worse. There’s a discussion about men NOT being hormone-driven maniacs who have no control over their impulses (for an interesting perspective, read Micah Murray’s piece, http://bit.ly/1dzk1BV ) , and who will do almost anything for sex.

This is too big for one post. And we’re only skimming the surface here. I’m certainly not the only one writing about it, not by far, but we need more people talking and writing about it.

It’s something I take very seriously, as a woman, as a wife, as a mother, as a human.

What I wear should not single me out for harassment, regardless of how much skin I show.

My sons should be responsible for their own actions, their own choices when it comes to purity, attitudes of the heart and physical expression.

My daughter should be free to respect herself and not draw her self-worth from how much attention she garners with her bra straps or short-shorts. And she should be safe from other people treating her as an inanimate object or something inherently sinful.

I’m going to look into this advertised purity retreat at that camp. I want to find out who is organizing it, what its goals are, and how they are treating this topic. I have a feeling it is probably representative of the whole purity/modesty culture that is so intrinsically interwoven in evangelical culture.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re doing something different with this retreat, bringing in fresh perspectives and voices that offer another way.

I know that, as a woman, I am created in the image of God. And men are as well. And we can all pursue a deeper relationship with Jesus, and that can include all parts of ourselves, even our sexuality. And that is something our students and young people need to hear.

Not Just a Pretty Face

18
Feb

There are times when a blog looks nice but has little to say.

It is easy to navigate but when you see the content that’s offered, there’s not much to keep you interested.

Some sites have content that’s combative, argumentative, created to stir up strife and visceral reactions, many times with the purpose of driving traffic to the site, if only for the chance to spout off about how the author is nuts.

I’ve visited sites where I wanted to read the content but the visual layout or intense colors made my eyeballs burn and I actually said something to the point of: “You’ve got good things to say but I can’t read this.”

I find myself with elements of all these dilemmas as I launch this new site.

Will I have anything to say?
Will you, dear reader, resonate with the words I write?
Do I adopt a reactionary stance and give myself an ulcer from dealing with all the negative stuff out there?

The goal of this site is to be more than just a pretty face, even though I do have to say that I like the way it turned out don’t you?

What You’ll Find Here

While I know it is standard practice to “find your niche” and zero in on one certain area of expertise, I find that I’m a dabbler and have written about many different things. In trying to narrow it down, I’ve found a few themes in the past four+ years of blogging.

Tone

First and foremost, I desire that this be a safe, encouraging place. That doesn’t mean we won’t address difficult, sometimes painful topics. We can do so, however, with respect and an appreciation for the nuances of life. Over time I have come to realize that just about everybody is doing the best they can with what they’ve got, and if we can approach one another with a posture of honesty and trust, our conversations will be much more productive. Let’s treat each other with an extra measure of grace.

~~Now shut up and bring me that cookie dough.~~ Can we all agree to that?

(Just teasin’ about that ^^^, but if you have cookie dough to share, I’ll bring my own spoon.)

Stories

As a blogger, writer and aspiring novelist, I walk all day around collecting stories. It is hard to unsee the stories once you’ve noticed them, and so they are now everywhere. It’s a little bit maddening, but in a good way. Writing is a way I order my thoughts and when I find a helpful tool or a way to further develop as a writer, I like to pass it along. The practical side will be a small portion here, and primarily you’ll see the curtain at the front of the house, and not the backstage workings.

I’d also like to support other writers, so when I find that I have the opportunity to spread the word about their work, I plan to do so. That may come in the form of book reviews, but also helping host book launches and guest writers, and events from other bloggers. There is room at this writing table for all of us.

Mischief

As we get to know one another, you’ll discover that I like making a good memory almost as much as I like a good story. Some mischief here, some silliness there — there’s almost always a reason to laugh a little, even in the most mundane, uneventful day. I hope you’ll find this site has a good sense of humor.

Spirituality

In almost every corner of our lives, I believe we can find traces of God, whispers and shiny stones He leaves to lead us back to Himself. Or Herself. …Either way, my relationship with Jesus and desire to better reflect his character and priorities is something as intrinsic to me as breathing.

In this area of spirituality, I have observations about the Big C “Church” and theology, especially as it pertains to evangelicalism and women. There are a lot of things we could be doing a whole.lot.better. I recognize that I can be a part of the solution.

Family/Parenting/Woman-ness

I’m a wife and a mom. These roles/relationships inform my perspective and are ever-present as I approach the world. I am not a perfect wife or mom (or person) but I really do try, even when it may seem like I’m in over my head (but if we’re honest, aren’t we ALL in over our heads when it comes to this stuff?). I’m a work-in-progress so I learn a lot from the mistakes I make and the interactions I have with my kids and family.

I can’t escape the way being a woman affects my perspective, nor do I wish to escape it. We are an amazing and dynamic group, full of power, tenderness, creativity, intelligence and resources. There are times when events impact women in very specific ways. I would like this to be a place that discusses womanhood and the issues that effect us.

Your Role

You play an important role here. I have room for guest writers, as I mentioned, if that’s your thing. I love to interact with your reactions to posts, your thoughts an insights to questions I’ve raised. I truly believe we’re better when we help one another, and because of that, the more people we bring here to get involved, the better off we all will be. Shares, likes, retweets, pins, and all other forms of support, including notes delivered via carrier pigeon, are deeply appreciated.

Thank you for joining me here. Even though we may not know each other (yet), I hope in some small way, this blog can help to make your day a little brighter.

Here and I’ve done all the talking. Would you care to say hello? Introduce yourself? Please do so in the comments — I’d love to meet you.

That Mom is Me

3
Feb

I am that mom.

I am the one who emailed the teacher to verify the start time of the event at school…and still showed up thirty minutes late.

I am that mom — the one who didn’t RSVP to the classmate’s birthday party until the morning it was scheduled to happen.

I am the mom who went to register my child for the enrichment class two days after the deadline because I didn’t take time to read the informational letter. I’m also the one who apologized my way in.

I’m that mom, the one who got the phone call from the kindergarten teacher asking if I’d be there soon. It was Mom’s Day, and my daughter was waiting for me. I walked in and all the moms were sitting on the floor, each one with a child next to them or on a lap. All except for my daughter who sat at the foot of the teacher while she read a book to the class. My daughter. Alone.

I’m the mom whose kid had toothpaste down the front of his shirt, the one whose kid wore boots at school all day long because he forgot shoes and I didn’t think to check his backpack. When he got home, his socks were soggy.

I’m that mom — the one who thought she had enough time to get milk and bread from Target. I was still a few minutes from home when I watched my child’s bus come towards me on the road. Again, my daughter. Again, alone.

I’m the mom who had to air out the house because the stove burner was left on for hours. The flame had gone out, but the knob was still set on simmer, natural gas seeping into the kitchen, out to the dining room and down the hallway.

This all happened last week.

I’m that mom, and I know it.

/////

Have you seen me? You know you have. You know there’s someone like me, someone who is that mom to you.

That one mom who always seems to come charging in late, disheveled, discombobulated.

The one who makes you feel think, ‘Well, I may not have it all together, but at least I’m not like her.’

Do you know how much it sucks to be that mom?

A lot. It sucks a lot.

http://mrg.bz/k2aG5h

Contrary to how it might appear, I’m not a total flake. I’m not checked out, I’m not “smoking too much weed”, I’m not a train wreck, not a disaster. And I’m not a bad mom.

I’m just in a rough patch.

I have enough personal family gunk going on that I have to prioritize what can receive my attention. Some things have to go.

Having never been a detail-lover, I now find they are the first things to escape me. They are de-prioritized without me even trying. And those are just the details I know I forgot — how many have passed me by without me even feeling the breeze they made? I’ll probably find out later that I only knew the half of how badly I was screwing up.

In the midst of this, I am trying to take care of myself as well, trying to make good choices and gauge what ways I can be kind to myself each day. I’m exercising, I’m brushing my teeth, I’m even laughing sometimes. Maybe I’m laughing too loudly, maybe it sounds a tiny bit hysterical, but it still counts.

I don’t need help feeling guilty about how I’m falling short of where I want to be. I can administer enough guilt on my own.

I have to extend grace to myself, the grace I would want to show someone else, but it’s hard. It’s hard to be nice to myself, because I see the ways I can’t do it all, the way I want to manage it alone but can’t. I know what I can usually take care of, and I see all the ways I can’t do it now.

I feel weak, and I hate feeling weak.

I feel looked down on, but as far as I know, the only one looking down on me is ME.

/////

Today I’m trying to give myself enough space to move around my life without knocking things over.

I’m going to give myself extra time to get done the things that usually take me less time but now seem to require more effort.

I’ll feed myself well.

I’ll let myself make mistakes and I’ll see them as mistakes, not as failings.

I’ll ask for help.

I’ll be to myself the person I’d want to be for someone else.

I’ll try to look for glory, for as my friend Kelly wrote, “Glory is most at home in the common, if you have eyes to see.” (You can read her post here: http://bit.ly/1j6DhxJ )

When I come out of this rough patch, as I know I will eventually, I will work to remember what it was like to be that mom. And when I see her, the one for whom the burden of everyday seems almost to much to handle, I’ll pray that she can be gentle and patient with herself, that she’ll see how she can be good to herself in the midst of struggle. And if I can, I will let her know that she’s not the only one.

Eventually, there comes a time when we all are that mom.

Five Minute Friday: Visit

25
Jan

It has been so fun to connect through Lisa-jo Baker’s linkup, Five Minute Friday. The attempt is to quiet our inner critic and allow ourselves to write for the fun of it. Five minutes, no editing, no censoring, just do it. It’s open to anyone, and you can find other posts and details at Lisa-jo’s blog, http://lisa-jobaker.com Here’s my contribution this week.

Prompt: Visit

Three, two, one, go.

A Visit to My Youth

The snow begins falling as we pull into town. The limestone cliffs along the western edge of the road, the river on our right, these indicate our entrance into a portal back in time, back to my youth.

This is a time before marriage, before children and before the surety of routine and day to day, a time before we thought we knew it all. We didn’t know what we didn’t know…and so we asked stupid questions that, looking back, were the wrong questions but they were all we had at the time. Details about a tree falling in the woods and who would hear it, an appreciation for our hands we couldn’t articulate and it came out tinny and small in our ears.

I visit my youth and I laugh too loudly with little care for disturbing, free abandon leaking all over the room and exuberance splashing onto the people around me. You are the best, you are the funniest, you are the wittiest, most interesting person I’ve ever met and I only have attention for you…until someone else draws me into their conversation and then it begins afresh.

Here children have no trouble in math, they have no bad dreams at night, they don’t ask questions I can’t answer.

Here husbands don’t need their needs accounted for, their relationship attended to, their vibes unpacked.

There is only freedom, warmth, expansive inclusion to the whole restaurant, and this witching hour only lasts until the stroke of midnight. Then my nearly 40-year-old head is on the pillow, my visit over and I return to reality.

There you have it. A hacky five minute post, but it is something rather than nothing. Do you have locations or people that launch you back in time? Situations when you find yourself acting as a younger version of yourself? Tell us about it in the comments below, we’d love to hear about YOU.

Five Minute Friday: Encouragement

17
Jan

Someone close to me brought me a meal.

I hadn’t had a baby, broken a leg or been in a car accident.

But she brought me a meal.

So did another friend, and she was the one who had just delivered. I was supposed to bring her a meal.

Words sent to someone else and passed on to me — kind, affirming, validating.

These things breathed air into my floppy balloon, the one that was in danger of settling on the floor, a puckered, withered, sandy shadow of the party favor it had once been. Their words, their phone calls, their messages, buoyed me up and let me float in a more proper balloon-y place.

Maybe I’m not floating on an airstream across the world with a special note hanging from my string, but

I’m more in that middle air of the hallway, at the level that makes you think there’s a person walking towards you,

the kind that makes you jump and if someone’s watching they laugh to see your surprise. That moment that gives freedom from worry and concern, hope that there will be laughter again.

The encouragement of friends who hold you up when it is hard to get off the floor — this is a precious thing indeed.

*****

Join a great group of people for Five Minute Friday to write without editing for the sheer joy of it. Find out more at http://lisa-jobaker.com.

Are you facing challenges or a hard time? This is a safe place to share about it. I genuinely hope you have people in your life who can help breath air into your life. Maybe in the comments we should name names. Who is an encourager in your life?

Five Minute Friday: Together

25
Oct

It’s Five Minute Friday and the word prompt is “together” but what came out spun off in it’s own directions. I don’t know how to explain this except to say when I saw the prompt I immediately thought about how lately I’ve been thinking about starting a “small group” through my church. The only thing is, the more I think about it, the more confined I feel by that definition — that a small group needs be organized under the umbrella of a church. I didn’t used to function that way. Maybe that was because I had the luxury of overlap between the people who were in the small group, people who were my friends, and people with whom I attended church.

Things now don’t have the same overlap.

Enough with the preamble. I’ll be interested in your reactions, so please feel free to chime in in the comments. As always, I am very grateful that you’ve taken time out from your day to read my scattered thoughts.

Deep breath.

Ready.

Set.

GO.

*****

I don’t know when I became so rigid.

Maybe it was bit by bit,

as frost settling onto the top of water

into a crust of ice

into a brittle sheet

into a thickness you drive a car across and need an auger to drill through.

Definitions matter, but not if you use the wrong ones.

A place that preaches a doctrine of small groups in the midst of being a swarm,

very little is intimate about the great multiple-gather,

multiple-site,

multiple satellite venue,

People punch tickets, hand out gold stars for attendance but gloss over how hard it is

to force foot in front of foot as that doorway approaches.

Inside you see the round table (why a round table – you can’t hear the person across from you, you’re stuck with two options of conversation and one of them is inevitably busy talking to the person on the far side of them), purses already stake out territorial plastic claims

And no one stops their sentence to greet you.

No one looks up,

No one seems to realize you’re even there.

****

STOP

My Sister made me clean out my Makeup (and I didn’t like It)

21
Oct

Do you have a hobby? Maybe you like to scrapbook or maybe you’re a duck hunter? Maybe you collect vintage cigar boxes or propagate orchids.

I have varied interests but there is one thing that seems to have risen to the top of my list:

The quest for the perfect lipstick.

I realize that by admitting this I may have immediately lost some of the points on my feminist leaderboard,

And it gets worse.

What started off as a quest for the perfect lipstick has expanded.

It has grown in size and scope.

Now rather than simply looking for a nice, longwearing, subtle shade that compliments my skin tone,

I’ve started looking for other makeup products that can give me the same buzz as finding a candidate for the perfect lipstick.

This isn’t all of it.

I know. It’s a problem.

In my defense, the photo you’ll see below represents ALL the makeup I own. Can you wear the same stuff in the dead of a Minnesota winter that you wear in the middle of a humid, sunny summer? I think not. Therefore, in my defense, it looks worse than it really is. I think.

My sister was so flabbergasted to discover the depths of my storehouses that she insisted we go through it together and clean out what I didn’t use anymore.

“What?” I said.

“Let’s get rid of the stuff you don’t need,” she suggested.

“What?” I said.

“Come on, bring it out here,” she bullied.

And that’s when I discovered that perhaps I have a little more than is reasonable to hang on to. Observe:

She’s sad and amazed…so is my niece.

Yes, a couple of those bags are empty, but at least one of them is filled to the gills.

In sorting through it all, we discovered that I had 16 eyeliners. 16. Some were worn down to the nub and needed to go. A couple of them were extremely similar in color…like almost exactly alike. So she made me get rid of those.

She’s bossy like that.

While we went through it I came to the conclusion that I like concealer and blush, a lot. In my defense, I have chronic dark undereye circles (and apparently I have bags too although I did not know about this problem until a peppy, unrepentant girl at a sales counter informed me of this ailment. ‘Come out from behind the safety of that counter and tell me that,’ I thought.) that take some attention and sometimes multiple products are the only way to make a dent.

That still doesn’t justify how many concealers I had.

There was some negotiating, some finagling on my part to make my sister see the merits of certain products.

You see, Rae is a minimalist.

Seriously.

She hardly bothers with makeup at all, and when she does she’s got five things to choose from in her tiny makeup bag.

I think I gave her four of those five items.

Therefore, Rae cannot grasp the necessity of two different types of bronzers.

“All you need is one,” she claims, as if she’d know.

And when I explain what a primer is, she has a look on her face that is both confused and longsuffering.

“How many mascaras does one person need?” She shifts subjects to keep me off balance, thinking I won’t notice that she just threw away the primer we were discussing. I’m wise to her tactics and while she’s helping my niece put on a string of pop-beads I fish out the primer from her “throw away” bag.

In the end, we got rid of a lot. It may not look like it in the picture, but this is now my entire arsenal of makeup, all seasons of the year represented:

She got rid of a couple more things after we took this picture (but I snuck them back into my bag when she wasn’t looking).

Rae asked me how I felt once we had completed the job. And I have to admit, it did feel good to clear out all the broken, worn out, bad color pieces from the collection. I gave my niece a couple things to play with, thus securing my spot as Best Auntie for the day. I felt lighter, more in control of my stuff rather than the other way around.

In truth, it bothered me to see how much money I had invested over time.

Maybe that was what made it hard to get rid of any of it — I knew I had paid money for it so I needed to justify it by keeping it…

Kindof backwards logic when you spell it out, huh?

In the future, I plan to keep better track of what I have, in order to spare myself the trouble of storing things I hardly even use, along with freeing up space in my mind and budget. And if I need to get rid of a couple things, I’ll probably pass them on to Rae. Lawd knows she has room in her makeup bag.

Do you have a quest for a perfect item, be it jeans, jacket, haircut or lipstick? How do you keep it in check? What do you stockpile that you could do without (or do with less)?

Five Minute Friday: She

20
Sep

Photo from Morguefiles

“I don’t know what to do,” she said.

She’d only been home five minutes before the inner tension was too much and she had to talk to Mom about it.

“What do you want to do?” Mom asked.

“Everything,” she answered. “I want to leave, I want to stay, I want to scream, cry, break stuff and roll into a ball.”

“Which of those sound best right now?”

“Break stuff,” she grinned through her tears. “I won’t though. I have too much self-restraint.”

“Yes, that’s what you’re known for, self-restraint,” Mom said.

“Actually, the only thing that sounds good right now is something to eat. Do you have anything?”

Mom scoffed. “Do I have anything? Baby, sit down. I’ll take care of you.”

“Thanks.”

She pulled out a stool and sat while Mom rummaged through the fridge, proclaiming all her finds as she pulled them out.

She felt her eyes well up with tears, and she tried to sniff them back.

“Mom,” she began.

Mom kept her head in the fridge but said, “Hmm?”

“How can I feel strong and weak, confident and scared, bitter and generous all at the same time? I think I might be losing it.”

Mom emerged with a container of Cool-Whip in one hand and a container of strawberries in the other.

“No honey, you’re just being you. We’re all that way.”

****

This is my attempt at a fiction version of Five Minute Friday, though I definitely didn’t get many words down in that amount of time. *sigh* That’s okay. For those who don’t know, Five Minute Friday is a linkup with Lisa-jo Baker and it is lots of fun. Check out all the details on her site: http://lisa-jobaker.com I’d love to find your contribution (if you’re here with FMF), so please leave a link in the comment section below! And as always, thank you sincerely for visiting today.

Five Minute Friday: Fall

7
Jun

This is after it’s been tidied. Scary.

There are tumbleweeds of dog fur in the corner next to the buffet, the surface of which is covered in papers, pencil boxes and mail, rendering the buffet virtually undetectable.

There is an un-emptied suitcase at the foot of our bed from a trip taken three weeks ago. It’s not that I don’t need the clothes that might be in the suitcase, it’s that I’ve worn the same jeans every day this week, and that makes for a much lighter laundry load.

The children are required to make a path through their rooms from the door to their beds so I don’t trip on stuff, should they need me in the middle of the night. But as for putting away these items, it hasn’t happened lately.

My oldest son was supposed to have a friend over but I forgot to call the parent and solidify details. The gift we bought for our favorite teacher is still sitting on my kitchen counter — school was done last week.

If you wash the rugs in the bathroom, it makes it look like you have probably washed the actual floor.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/67774014@N00/7438145050

Why do I get bothered by these and other things I see as indicators of my own shortcomings?

Why do I expect certain things from myself that I wouldn’t expect from any one else?

In reverse, I make excuses for the things I have done. I made scones for a friend’s visit this week. She complimented them and I downplayed it. Even though it has been raining and generally icky outside, I have managed to split hostas, remove grass and replant or pot up at least 20 plants. But it doesn’t seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the other things on my list, so I decide that effort doesn’t count.What if we all, specifically all of us women and/or mothers, decided to cut ourselves some slack? What if we admitted that we don’t have to have it all figured out every moment of every day? What if we stopped expecting perfection from ourselves?

If that happened, I think we would start to realize no one expected it from us, that it was self-imposed.

And besides, no one was buying the image of perfection we thought we projected.

Let’s allow the façade to fall away and reveal the real imperfect us – quirky, overwhelmed, loving, strong, flawed, fully-human us. And we are amazing. We are beautiful.

This post is part of a link up with Lisa-jo Baker and Five Minute Friday. Check out all the details here: http://lisajobaker.com/ It is open to anyone. Come shake yourself out of the shackles of self-critique and write for the sheer pleasure of it. Today’s word prompt was Fall.