Glimpses at My Cutting Room Floor

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** Note: Gratuitous pictures of domestic failure follow this post. Read at you own risk!**

From the moment I found out we were having our first baby “it” started. What is “it,” you wonder? Well, “it” is a feeling, “it” is an action, “it” is a facade I started to put up in front of me to make sure every other mommy realized I had it all under control.

The truth is, some days, I feel like I do have it all under control. My schedule moves gracefully from breakfast through bedtime prayers. My kids rise and call me blessed (Prov. 31) and my husband blows air kisses to me as he saunters out the door for work. I have showered, done devotions, a load of laundry, and have dinner in the crock-pot by 8:30 a.m. Statistically these days occur about 0.82% of the time. For you right brainers out there, that’s about three days out of the year.

Many Most days don’t run so smoothly. Someone wakes up having wet the bed…for the third time in a week. I hit the snooze one too many times because I was up for an hour trying to convince one child that his bad dream was “just a dream.” I drag myself out from under the covers to start a pot of coffee that will sustain my energy for the first half of the day. The kids get in a fight over breakfast and a bowl of Tasty O’s goes flying across the kitchen. Milk everywhere. Dog commences clean-up. My patience, previously at level 2, plummets to record lows.

Becoming a mommy throws you into a battleground of the mind. We fall prey to the well-intentioned comments of Mommy A at mom’s group who never lets her child watch cartoons. (I quietly wonder, isn’t Elmo every three-year old’s best friend?) We slump in our chairs when we read Mommy B’s Facebook post which proudly announces how she took her eight homeschooled children on a trip to the zoo but only after having made fifteen loaves of bread from scratch and knitted three blankets for her favorite folks at the local nursing home. Sigh!

Here’s my point. If you’re at all like me, which I’m sure you’re not, you may be constantly comparing the highlight reel from someone else’s life to the sliced up pieces of film swirling around on your cutting room floor. Friends, that’s just not healthy. It’s not reality. We all have days that belong as key moments on the highlight reels of life. The newspaper clippings we’d love the world to see. But, reality states that we also have low points. Some sub-zero points. Points that we are ashamed of and for some reason assume Mommies A & B never have. Well, they do. We all do.

Let’s do ourselves a favor. Let’s continue to spur one another on toward love and good works (Heb 10:24). Let’s rejoice with one another when life’s blessing are so sweet. Let’s cherish the moments God gives us when everything is just “right.”

But, let’s also walk along side one another through life’s uglier moments. Moments that we would never post on Facebook or Pinterest. Moments that cause us to blush at their recollection. Moments that need forgiveness and moments that need repentance.

After all, living in the real world means we sometimes have dishes piled sky high, but friends whose needs we met instead

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Laundry baskets overtaking our homes, but prayers that were lifted on behalf of loved ones.

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And toilets, that just never seem to get scrubbed in time, without excuse. (I’ll spare you the picture on this one!)

Sending love from the trenches,

Marti

marti S.Guest Blogger: Marti Skow

Marti Skow is a boy raising, homeschooling, picture taking, blog/song/poetry writing, husband loving, work from home graphic artist. She has learned to graciously thrive in a house full of boys, living a life precariously between wedgie wars and warrior training. Marti has written several worship songs with her husband Josh and describes writing and poetry as her form of “knitting.” Some of her favorite things are good coffee (spelled Smokey Row), historical fiction and breakfast foods…preferably enjoyed together. Marti’s desire is to see the world as God sees it and to love His people as He does. You can read more about Marti’s life with boys atwww.betterbelieveit.wordpress.com.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Beautifully written. We don’t often share our shortcomings with others, wanting to seem “together”. But it is just those things we most hide that make us so imperfectly human and relate-able.

  2. I needed this… 🙂 JUST this morning I had someone wake up with a wet bed AND a bowl full of cheerios with milk (and sugar!) spilled all over 2 chairs and the floor. I actually just took pictures of my house being overcome with toys….and put them in a folder titled “someday I will miss this….”

  3. The content of this post is one of the many many reasons I love you! I’m so happy that you are writing cuz what comes from your pen is usually exactly what I feel.

  4. Something about this post actually drove me to tears. Beautifully written and so real. It just spoke right to my heart. Thank you for your honesty and for helping me to breathe a sigh of relief this morning. You are amazing, and your “pictures of domestic failure” make me think so all the more. I’m already looking forward to your next appearance on DMMB! 🙂

  5. I was nodding my head “yes!” while reading that third paragraph! What a great and absolutely REAL post! THANK YOU!!! I cannot wait to find time to catch up on your personal blog and am excited to see more of you on DMMB.

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