PROLOGUE

With four kids, sleeping late is a rare luxury. I enjoy it only when the compassion of my dear husband is at it’s most expressive. Even though I am up by 6am every day I still get up later than he does, so when he says he will rise early with the children on a Saturday so I can remain undisturbed in a blanket cocoon I know he really loves me. That is really the best way he can show it... flowers are nice and a movie is great - but sleep? Man, nothing is better than undisturbed rest in a comfy bed!

Sleep is a precious thing and until you go without it for a few years you assume it is not only a need but a constitutional right provided for in one of those amendments that you haven’t read yet. And so I come to the point…

Things are rarely the same in real life as we believe they are going to be and even less often are they the way we are told they are going to be by the Media. They are even, for some stupid reason, not the way they seem to be for every other person on the planet. You look at these “other people” and you see in-shape, bike-riding, poster children for the dental profession who have clean houses, cute kids, nice hair, big yards, dogs that heel and Friday nights out on the town followed by relaxed Saturdays full of cartoons, friends, naps and mowing the lawn (that picture perfect chore that handsome men do on sunny days without their shirts on).

What are you doing wrong? Why does your life not look like this? Why have you not gone anywhere for the last two years worth of Fridays, and Saturdays are just Thursdays all over again? Why is it that your bicycle has only one tire and the closest thing to “in-shape” you can claim is that you own a spandex something or other (where is that thing?). Why are your kids always covered in some kind of unidentifiable slime and leaving crap all over your house? And what are naps anyway?

I had a life-altering experience the other day that answered this question for me. I got a phone call from my sister.

My sister and I both homeschool our kids. She called to tell me she had seen some pictures on Facebook of some of our school projects and after seeing what we had been doing decided she should give up homeschooling all together. Apparently, compared to our awesomeness, she had failed beyond reason at teaching and it was no longer a benefit to her children to teach them at home if she could not do better. While we were having live action reenactments of western frontier living she was having modern-day, pre-teen melt downs upon the pursual of each and every math problem presented.

Turns out, to my sister I was the “other People”! I was the one with everything perfect!

Impossible! For one thing, my teeth are nowhere near poster quality and for another, I feel like quitting homeschooling every year!! There is practically a whole month in there where I am sure that handing my children over to the ever elusive Sasquatch for wilderness survival training  would have been a better choice than homeschooling. (I don’t know how much you know about New England but February is a pretty rough month and if you are not as tough as ice picks and armed with snow tires and endless cups of coffee you will want to give up on a whole lot more than schooling. Even then your chances are iffy. But I digress.)

Why would my sister think i was the picture of homeschooling success? Because that is all she saw. We as human beings try to put forward the best parts of ourselves and conceal that which is less appealing. Understandably so. No one wants to be known as the lady who has to wax her upper lip or the one who has boogies that need to be cleaned out daily or the guy with the foot fungus or the parent whose kid just locked their friend in the closet then forgot about them until called upon to produce said friend an hour later. No one wants to be that friend either.

Be that as it may, i think there is something invaluable in opening up and being real. In letting people see the ways in which you fall short. In showing that you have a mess and crazy stuff and things you deal with and occasional spurts of brainlessness. Because as much as we don’t want others to see that we are “that one with the thing”  we all secretly know that we are and believe we are fighting that battle alone. We assume and feel the condemnation of those who don’t even know our struggle without stopping to think that they may (and probable are) struggling with the very same things.

Let me tell you what this book (blog) is NOT:

It is Not an excuse to act like a college freshman on his first spring break in FL after being released from a mental ward (“no one's perfect so no one can judge me.”)

It is Not a reason to give up trying to be that person we want to show to the world (“no one is perfect so why even try.”)

It is Not a tool to make others feel vulnerable and pathetic (“no one is perfect so if I play my cards right i will look even better!”)

Let me tell you what this book (blog) IS:

It Is an example to show you that in all of your human struggle, you are not alone. Everything in this book is a true story so when you see someone living out something so dumb it had to have been made up, it wasn’t - and you can say “wow there is someone worse than me!” and when you see something that you yourself have been guilty of you can say “boy, I’m glad i’m not the only one!”

It Is to encourage you to be forgiving of others because, baby, you’re right there with them! If you’re not alone, neither are they. And don’t go and say “well they do this! At least I don’t do that”... well maybe you don’t but you got your own brand of stupid.

It Is an example of how to be real with people and ourselves and God. And being real is important. There is no true relationship, no grace, no trust, no love where there is no honesty. Show who you really are in all of your mess and when you do the gratitude and friendly connection will flow like the mighty Mississippi in a spring thaw.

Trust me! All of your friends are struggling with the same stuff and are trying to pretend that they have it all together with, perhaps, enough success that you are convinced they do. So now you don’t want them to know that you are the only basket case in the group, which is the same thing everyone else is thinking and you all carry around this big secret load alone. Talk about dumb!

This book is also to make you laugh. To help you see the humor in our humanity - and trust me, there is plenty of it. We need to be able to laugh at ourselves and say “I am a freakin’ mess but God’s grace is sufficient for me and He loves me even in my mess.”

Knowing that His Grace is enough and a we don’t have to take ourselves so seriously is a huge load off! We have a mound of things trying to stress us out but if we can get rid of the idea that we need to prove something to somebody I bet half of that stress would be gone.