Be what you want to see.

Last night as I was driving home at 7:00pm after 3 hours of Jr high basketball. I listened to my son as he told me how defeated he felt. There were many things that happened through out the day that just made him feel like he wasn’t good enough. It broke my heart. I reassured him that he was good enough and his personal best is just fine. You can only be as good as you can be and that I was proud of who he is every day. It didn’t help as you can imagine. His heart was broken and mine was too listening.

I hate the hard stuff. The stuff that we do everything in our power to avoid for our children. The stuff that scuffs their heart and soul. The stuff that makes them who they will be regardless of what I want for them. So I did what any good mom would do. I asked him at 7:30 where he wanted to go for dinner. Texted his Dad and the 8 of us were off to Applebees. I knew I could turn this around in no time with some fries, a tall cold coke for him, beer for me and burgers all around. If all else failed I had a bowl of chocolate crinkle cookie dough chilling in the fridge as back up. Cookies in my book solve all scuffs and scrapes.

I have gone through life much like my son, with scuffs, scrapes and feelings of insecurities. The not good enough has run through my mind numerous times over the years. I have come to realize as an adult everyone feels that way one time or another but it is funny how when you are going through it personally you feel like the only one person on earth with a broken heart. It is hard to pull yourself up by the boot straps and tell that voice in your head to “shut it” and move forward with the feeling that you are good enough.

I love that there are so many people out there spreading the joy honestly. Telling men, women, boys and girls that they are enough but unfortunately those words are often drowned out by the perfectionism that we crave. I recently came across an article Glennon from Momastery was interviewed for. She was talking about how important it is for us to get up and live the life we want our world to be. If it is peace you are craving, live peacefully. If it is love you want to see more of, love harder. If it is generosity you feel is needed, then give more freely. It got me thinking. She is on to something. She said it in simple terms that if you want it than do it, because goodness grows more goodness. Its contagious. Right? Right!

Some how it has lightened my mind this week. I struggle with feelings of not being taken seriously, taking my work extremely personally and feeling like more is wanted from me than I am capable of giving. Those words of “be the world you want to live in” have unlocked some of those frustrations for me. Although I am old enough to know that I am overly sensitive and after time I will realize that what I perceived was not actually what was meant but it doesn’t mean that I still don’t harbor those feelings.

I am looking at things differently now. I know the type of world I want to live in and some how that has given me the extra courage to live it and to be it. It shouldn’t matter to me who catches on. It should matter to me that I am an example and that is what I hope to be. I hope to be the example of what I would like to see for my children.

Even at 40 I am still growing and learning. It is exciting to me to really breathe in the chapters of my life and feel them. This week brought a lot of moments and details that are now tucked away for future reference. Here are some bits.