Yesterday it was a curled hair & fresh makeup selfie.
Today it’s hubbys shirt, leftover makeup & bags under my eyes like a hobo just getting by in life.
If I wanted to, I could just stick to that first selfie. I could smile through my tired eyes and make everyone believe that I feel vibrant and happy and victorious every minute of every day. I won't though. I want to be the reason someone else looks up and thinks "If this hot mess can follow her dreams and fall all over herself and get back up and smile and still admit she doesn't have it all together, then I can too!" I think it’s really important that we do not compare someone else’s highlight reel to our own reality and the every day parts of life.
Life is beautiful & guess what else? It’s also messy.
I have had a really rough week with my baby being sick, my husband being gone and well, just four kids in general. 🤪 Is it OK if I tell you that it’s actually been kind of a nightmare?! Because of that, I have been finding myself balancing on that fence between recognizing my weakness as an opportunity for God to show up and the other side of the fence which is trying to live a life that looks perfect and beautiful all the time in my own strength. {this is a lie from the pit btw}.
I admit I find myself looking through other people’s IG profiles and assuming their lives always look like that. I catch myself thinking “What’s wrong with me?! Why do I feel like I just can’t get it together no matter how hard I try?! Meanwhile, there they are, with their beautifully dressed kids & perfectly clean house & successful businesses, etc. I want that too!” In my sleep deprivation yesterday, I felt weak and all gooey in the head. My spirit was yelling truth to me but my soul was getting the better of me. I literally said something out loud yesterday about someone else's post that just made me feel inadequate and my 12-year-old son grabbed my phone out of my hand and said: “Stop!!! That is not helping you Mom.” He then proceeded to tell me all the reasons why I am, in his words: “The best mom in the world...” and helped me understand that the messy part of my reality is just a part of this amazing gig called 'motherhood!' I love how my kids pull me off the ledge when I admit out loud how weak I feel. In fact both my 10 and 12 year old will full on 🙌preach🙌 when I get to that place and it always reminds me of what an amazing job I must be doing for my kids to have that kind of fruit and truth bubbling up out of them when someone else needs it the most!
I think one of the things that’s most dangerous about comparing our reality to someone else’s 'illuminated stage', is the isolation that comes along with it. If because of comparison, we’re believing the lie that something is 'wrong with us', it makes us afraid to let people in. We end up wearing masks and the truth is, we’re not fooling anybody but ourselves!
True joy comes when we’re free to be all the way “us” all the time. This makes us relatable and way more attractive to the world than trying to live a life that looks alive and beautiful on the outside when on the inside it’s dead and stinky. Nobody’s going to want to do life with a white washed tomb! We won't even want to do life with ourselves if it's come to that!
The world needs us to be real. While beautiful pictures, and beautiful moments frozen in time leave us feeling nostalgic and at peace with the world that sometimes looks like it’s falling apart, I think ‘real & messy’ is important too.
Life is beautiful, life is messy, & life is better when we are willing to embrace all of these parts together. Keep being beautiful girl, keep being real.
Let’s agree to do it all together!
XO, Alisha