I Wanna Be THAT Mom

I'll admit it. I do. I wanna be THAT mom. You know, the one who appears to have it all together? She volunteers 3 days a week at her kids' school(s). She makes it to the gym every morning AFTER rising early to read her bible, fix her family breakfast from scratch and get them off to school. She meets friends for lunch, after she delivers meals on wheels. Her home is always impeccably clean. Not to mention that she decorates like a pro. She even blogs in her spare time and inspires everyone with her words, her charm, her openness, her life in general. She's organized. She's ON TIME. She's the homeroom mom and puts on amazing holiday parties both for her kids' classes and for adults in her home. She's a great cook, a devoted wife, an amazing friend. Yep. I wanna be her. And sometimes, I beat myself up when I realize just how far from being her I really am. It's humbling. And depressing. And so absolutely FRUSTRATING!!!

But when I take a step back and allow Him to, God speaks to my heart. Quietly, reassuring me, loving me. And that's when the Truth hits me. That mom, she doesn't exist. She isn't real. Yes, there are moms who have it more together than others. There are moms that thrive on volunteering and do it well. There are moms who go from sun up to sun down, non-stop. And they wear themselves out. Sometimes, they get so busy doing that they forget to just BE, to just enjoy their families. They don't have it all together any more than you or I. Then an even bigger Truth hits me...

I don't have to have it all together. I don't have to be that mom. I have strengths that are mine alone. And I can use them to the best of my ability to be the best mom I can be. We all have strengths and weaknesses. We all struggle. We all fail. We all find ways to go on. We all have areas where we triumph. We are enough. I am enough. YOU ARE ENOUGH. There is no right or wrong here. There is no one mom who is better than another. We have all been called to OUR place, in OUR family, to do OUR best. Not another woman on the planet could come into our home and do our job as well as we can! It's what we were created for. It's where we thrive. Some days, we look like THAT mom to others. Some days, we watch other moms seemingly outshine us. It's an endless cycle, but it's just that, a cycle. We (speaking to myself here!) need to focus on where we are strong rather than where we are weak. We need to encourage that mom who's clearly struggling as her kid is screaming through the aisles at the supermarket. We need to smile. We need to laugh. We need to relax and simply enjoy the life we've been given and not sweat the small stuff! We need to take a moment, even if it's 5 minutes locked in our bathroom, LOL, to breathe, to give ourselves the grace found only in realizing that we are enough. We are THAT mom already. :)