Mother Love

I hope that you feel something when you read my blog or see my photos or watch my life. But I hope what you don’t feel is comparison, insecurity, inadequacy, lacking, or that somehow you and your life do not measure up.

I hope that you don’t feel like my life is perfect or that I have it all together. Please, dear friend, don’t ever feel like that. Don’t ever let yourself believe that the life that someone shares on the internet or on social media is perfect. No one has a perfect life. No one. I have a good life, but not a perfect one. Most days you will find me with an old t-shirt and baggy shorts and a poorly-done top knot that always seems to want to lean to one side and make me look hilarious. Most times there are piles of dishes by the sink and crumbs from Ayla’s high chair on the floor beyond the photos of a meal or a baked good that’s just come out of my oven. I try to keep a neat home because clutter drives me crazy, but I don’t keep a perfect home. My windows are dirty, a collection of random items that needs organizing sits on the dryer, dust bunnies hang from the ceiling fan in our bedroom. But you’ll probably never see any of this, and honestly, I’m not about to show it all to you.

There’s a lot of conversation on authenticity going on all over the online world and I think it’s a good conversation, absolutely. But I also think that perhaps we tend to think of authenticity as “share the nitty gritty, dirty corners, darkest places” kind of thing, and while yes I do think that can be a part of being authentic, I tend to see the beautiful, precious, lovely moments of life as the most authentic authenticity of all. My life is full of richness, blessings, goodness, love, light, sweet moments. I have hard days, hard moments, battles to fight, pressures to push back against, doubts, insecurities, messy corners, and uncleaned areas of both my heart and home…but I don’t live my life focusing on those things. I live my life looking for the beauty and the sacredness and the sweet pursuit of Jesus in the every day.

So I talk about our weekends that are full of good times with my husband and child and family and friends because those are the beautiful moments I want to dwell in. I write about the blessing of being a mama and how I enjoy my baby girl because that is what I want my heart to fully experience. I share photos of little moments and pretty things and good food because those are all the things that I receive as blessings and gifts from my God. Those are the things I want to focus my heart on….not the hard things or the dirty corners. I want to live and share my life authentically with all of you, sweet friends, but because my life truly is full of goodness and blessing and beauty, that is what I hope you will see both IRL (that’s “in real life,” for those of you like myself that didn’t even know what that meant until a few weeks ago…it’s impossible to keep up with all the slang these days!) and from my online spaces.

What about you: what are your thoughts about being authentic in these online spaces? Do you wrestle with knowing exactly how do that for your own self?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Our weekend started with a date night on Friday night, a sort-of belated Valentine’s dinner for us. We usually try to avoid going out on big holidays or when we know restaurants will be crowded so we waited until this weekend to plan a special evening out. It was seriously one of the funnest nights out we’ve had in months, and we had a delicious meal and shared a dark chocolate pot de creme with olive oil gelato and olive oil jam for dessert…literally one of the best desserts I’ve ever tasted!

Saturday was a full day of work and house projects at home, and it was one of those days that just felt like you got a lot done by the end of it. Ben worked on building a small desk table for our office, since we are currently just using a big Lifetime table that takes up way too much space, not to mention it’s not really aesthetically pleasing. He does amazing with those wood working projects and never fails to blow me away with how he can put simple things together and make them look like something right of a magazine. We’re all fighting head colds around here, so once I got the laundry and some cleaning finished up, I spent most of the afternoon sitting on the floor with Ayla. She seems to be fighting both a cold AND doing some teething right now, so she has her moments when she feels a little miserable, poor little dear. I went out for the evening then with my sister-in-law and some of her friends, who were all in town for a weekend conference. We had supper and coffees at Fido, and it had really been a long time since I’ve done a girl’s night out and it was just fun to get out again with other chatty, fun women.

We spent Sunday at home doing what we love to do on our Sundays: rest and relax! We took naps and lounged in our pajamas and had a big lunch and took more naps and did a lot of reading for the afternoon. We had church at four, and then came home to our normal Sunday night routine…which is feed Ayla and put her to bed, then have what we call our “sunday suppers” (which is a fancy name for a fend-for-yourself-pull-out-all-the-leftovers-make-an-egg-burrito kind of supper, hehe), talking over the week ahead, spending some time praying for each other, and then watching Shark Tank before turning out the light.

Hope your weekend was just as lovely, dears!

Here are five interesting things from the web:
– every parent should watch this
– a cool tip
– EVERY MOM SHOULD READ THIS
– this album has been on repeat at our house
– I can’t stop making this lentil stew

What about you: what’s a favorite thing to do on your Sundays?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!