The Mom Competition.

I am the oldest kid in my family.
Growing up, it meant that I spent a fair amount of time hanging around adults. On purpose, in fact.

Their conversations were waaaay more interesting.

And I managed to learn a lot of things that way...as I tried to remain as invisible as possible.
(This is easy for a kid to do when adults are hanging with their friends...you get forgotten about pretty quick in that scenario. Well...until the conversation started tip-toeing into more 'mature' topics and all-of-the-sudden furtive grown-up eyes reveal you! a too-young-for-this eavesdropper who ends up getting so unfairly shooed from the room to go get ready for bed or something. As you can tell, some leftover indignation still remains...)

Anyways.

One of the things I learned from my under-the-age-of-majority-observations of adults was this:
Homemakers apparently loved to compare themselves to each other.

And then they loved to feel bad about it. Or feel pretty good about themselves (which was usually terribly hidden) when they encountered a situation where they just knew they were doing better than so-and-so.

That's the way it appeared to me, anyways. Just a kid, who thought adults were fascinatingly weird.

Now that I am a homemaker, I understand the feeling a little better, and would not begin to describe it so tritely now. It still fascinates me, though. And scares me a little at the same time. Because I find it far more difficult to resist than I had once thought. It's starting to set in!

Aaaaaaaaargh!

But really. I have seen (and continue to see) that dark habit--so easy to acquire--do some pretty destructive stuff to homemakers' sense of self-worth. I hate that. I don't want to perpetuate it. And I don't want to suffer from it.

THAT, of course, is far easier said than done. As is any goal where perfection is the standard of success.

And I've often wondered why the tendency to compare. I can only think about it from where I'm coming from...although I'll use 'we' just so that I don't feel so isolated in my disclosure...ha. :)

...Go-go Self Reflection:

I think it maybe has to do with feedback. Because homemaking is such a vitally important and rewarding job, it comes with a lot of hurdles ("opposition in all things").
One of those hurdles can be loneliness, for one, resulting from a fairly segregated work locale (read: your own home, not an office where everyone congregates at the water cooler). If you don't make the effort to connect with others in a real and meaningful way, your house can feel like four walls keeping you in...instead of four walls inviting others to join you, a haven.

And so I find that without monthly reviews, tests and graded papers, a yearly evaluation of your effort, or any other such mode of measurement, there's not really a whole lot of instantly-gratifying ways to know that you're doing a good job. The easiest and most artificial way of finding out seems to be by comparing what we're doing to what other moms are doing. At least that way we've got an instant rating scale...if other moms are doing it, then we should be, too...right?

(Never mind taking into account different families, different situations, different women, different opinions...not to mention that all you usually ever see of others is their game-face: their house cleaned for company, their kids groomed for public appearance, and politely disguised marital 'milk-spills', if you will. Which is all fine to do, I think. In fact, it's usually out of respect for our company that we present our best. But when it becomes about convincing other people....about who-knows-what, maybe that things are always this fantastic....then I think it's a different story altogether).

I often need to remind myself that comparing is the easy way out.
It keeps me from thinking deeply about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and who I really should be trying to impress. That's harder to discern. It takes more effort. And it's harder to be truthful about. Especially when just looking to the mom-next-door is so rewarding to our egos...whether it be satisfying our belief that we're doing great (in comparison to...what?) or stroking our self-pitying tendencies. Both of which I believe are ego-induced.

I'm finding that I'm in a constant battle with myself to seek approval from the right source (read: my Father in Heaven).
And to be fair to moms everywhere, I think that the tendency to compare is not just a homemaker's plague. But I do think that there's more potential for harm in a homemaker's, in a mom's, life as a result of not seeking our self-confidence from the right place inside.
And I think that's because what we're doing is so SO important.
It makes sense to me that the job with the highest stakes is the one that can be most affected by losing sight of what's really important.

I want to be humble enough to learn from other moms: to enjoy theirs and my own successes with my whole heart, not just the part I can spare because the other half of my heart is drowning in secret woe-is-me's.
If I can do anything to keep from living like that, then I'm gonna do it.

During the past few days a few full-time homemakers who I really respect have posted pictures of the rooms of their houses on their blogs in true-to-living form: strewn toys, clothes on beds, unfolded laundry.

How beautiful.
How honest.
Oh, how I love it.

A Favourite.

One of my favourite poets is William Wordsworth.
And I have always loved this poem. I even memorized it after I discovered it for the first time in my grade twelve Literature class.

(Side note and confession time....I also memorized the first two stanzas from a Spanish poem we read in Spanish class once; it was partly because I thought the lines were beautiful...but partly because I wanted to be able to impress someone, someday with how fast I could speak in Spanish...regardless of what I was actually saying. I think it even worked once. Mission: accomplished.)

When it comes to living each day with joy and passion, this one just says it all for me.

MMMmmm yummy........LOVE that poem.

One of Those Days.

Today Baby-Rae was having one of those days.
The kind of day where she refuses to be cheerful if she's not being held or at least receiving attention in some way or another, particularly from her Mama.

It could be because she has been missing the constant barrage of love n' kisses she got from aunties, uncles, and grandparents last week. It could be because her little gums are tender and she just wanted to be held. It could be both, or something completely different, the message being lost in translation.
Whatever the reason, she insisted on being wherever I was, at least within a foot, but preferably attached.

(And part of me kind of loved that....shhh, don't tell.)

So she became my newest limb. We snuggled and chatted, she reached for things she should never eat while I made breakfast, and insisted on getting in some assisted walking time.

...Babies are so demanding... :)

Then she went down for her morning nap, and despite all my best efforts to just let her fuss it out when she woke up after not-long-enough, it was harder today, for some reason, to hear her cry.

...Maybe I'm having one of those days, too.

So I caved. I got her out, and we cuddled to the tune of her drinking her bottle. I put her on the floor and laid down beside her. As I was curled around her on my side, reading my book, I felt something on my elbow. I looked and there she was, sucking on it. I laughed, out loud, and she peeked around my arm to see what the deal was. She grinned...and went back to sucking my elbow, peeking around every couple seconds to smile as I continued to giggle uncontrollably.
....Who sucks an elbow??... AND.... it tickled.

I hugged her so hard so many times today. I threw out plans I had to play with her and the Toddler because there was no way Baby-Rae was letting me get much done without her. We ran around the kitchen. We read library books fifty times. Almost everything else a baby and toddler could want to do, we did.

It was a good day.

I love being a mom.
Occasionally I'll wish that I didn't have to clean the house or cook the meals....but I have never wished I could hand back my title of Mother. That one, I cherish.

I wonder sometimes if I'll get to spend as much one-on-one time with my future kids as I do with my Baby-Rae. Maybe it just takes more planning, more conscious effort to squeeze it in. Maybe first babies get to be first because they need centre-stage for a while, the rest come after because they are a-okay with proportionally less mom-only time.
Maybe I'll be surprised by how easy it is to manage.
Maybe I'll be surprised by how tough it is.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe I'll find out someday soon-ish.

Loving Mister Thoreau.

I really really really want to make myself an Inspiration Book.
...Because I really really really need reminding every once in a while, of the kind of person I'm trying to become.
A meaningful dive into the scriptures always helps. It would, however, be nice to be able to go to a source where I can revel in some of my favourite juicy words from other inspired individuals as well. And pictures. Photos, paintings, anything. Those inspire me, too.

Anyways.

On that note...and a personal resolve to explore Henry David Thoreau's works...I've found some beauties-of-quotes of his. These are just a few that got me right in the gut...right in that sweet spot...the spot where good words aim when they're meant to be turned into action. Love when that happens.

"A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone."

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."

"Be not simply good; Be good for something."

"Goodness is the only investment that never fails."

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."

"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." 

Winter's Thousand Words.

Invictus

I saw the movie Invictus the other night with one of my favourite friends. The movie was not what I expected, but was still incredibly inspiring (I think I expected it to be more political than it was).

The movie borrowed its name from a poem, the poem that Nelson Mandela drew on for inspiration throughout his imprisonment...and beyond. This poem was by far my favourite part of the whole movie; I had to come home and look it up ASAP just so I could soak up every word that I missed.

Enjoy.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

-William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

Humble Pie.

This past week I decided to have a focus for self-improvement. Along with other goals, I selected being more humble as something I was going to work on this week. As I made efforts at getting a little humility, I planned to journal my experiences. I was especially attentive to humility-learning opportunities and situations.

Or so I thought.

So the beginning of the week came screaming to a start with the bad colds, cold weather, Toddler for three days, cabin fever thing. Add my (insert preferred euphemism for "period" here), plus wacky hormones from weaning, a teething baby, packing for a whirlwind weekend away, and a husband-wife duo who were kind of cranky with each other and... 
TA-DAA! The perfect scenario to learn....um, patience...?


Wrong virtue. I was supposed to be working on humility, dangit.

I concluded that maybe Heavenly Father was giving me the opportunity to learn to be humble enough to ask Him for the help and strength to get through it all. Which was probably true, too. But there was a bigger lesson for me to learn there, too.

Did I mention the husband-wife duo that was kind of cranky with each other? And did I mention the hormones? AND the fact that I needed to be humble enough to ask for help...not DEMAND it like I'm cashing in an I.O.U?

When Baby Rae and I finally got out the door for a quick weekend road trip to The Land of the Extended Family for a special event (D-Hubby had a midterm and had to study...poor hubby), D-Hubby and I kissed goodbye and were...ready... for the required few days apart.

And so the weekend went.
I got to see my little sister and her almost-hubby treat each other like gold. I got to spend a lot of time driving and thinking. And I got to spend a lot of time in a deeply spiritual place.

The recipe for a remedy.

By request, my sister told me a little about what she thought of her hubby-to-be. In describing her fiance to me, my sister said "he gives praise and affection freely, something I now know is an aspect of humility."
Ding!
At this, I knew what my week was supposed to teach me. It really was humility all along. I sure hadn't been showering D-Hubby with praise and affection the past week, that's for sure. Some of the things that we had been working through that week were valid concerns that needed to be addressed, but I sure could have done five hundred times better at making sure that he felt loved and validated while we were working through them.

My sissy and I had a conversation this past summer about the whole praise thing. There's a line in a talk by Ezra Taft Benson called Beware of Pride (a fanTAStic talk, a must-read) where he describes a symptom of pride as being "withholding praise." It's an aspect of pride that has always intrigued me (hence, why it came up in discussion with this sissy). I have often wondered what it is about pride that causes you to withhold praise from another. I have some theories. One is that you feel that it's your responsibility to keep them humble, not the Lord's. You feel like you'd be giving them a big head if you told them too many good things. Another is maybe that you feel you could have done better anyway, and that what they're doing is really not that great, or that it's something they're supposed to be doing anyway...so why tell them it's appreciated? Or that they did a good job of it? Another is that we somehow think that by telling someone what's good about them, we're saying that we lack it...or that it diminishes us somehow. Or we don't do it  because we think that we deserve the praise somehow, and that if we're not getting it then nobody is.

I don't really know what it is about pride that causes an inability to sincerely praise the attributes and accomplishments of others. But whatever it is, I don't want it.

Ewww.

So that was the lesson I was taught about humility this week.
(Which is good, because I failed miserably at the patience one.)
After a weekend away from my D-Hubby, I sure appreciated and loved him more.

And you better believe I went and TOLD him so.