{this moment} - This is a Friday ritual, a SouleMama tradition. Just a moment from our week – one I want to treasure and remember.
If you’re inspired to do the same, please feel free to leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments. Have a wonderful weekend, and hold your family tight!
Not a lot of fuss happened at my house for mother’s day. The young ones (with a little help from dad) brought me some flowers, and my son made me the most adorable paper flower bouquet at preschool.
Other than that, it was a usual day – involving messes (and cleaning up of messes), petty fights (and breaking up of petty fights), dishes, meals, laundry, and a lot more patience than I keep on hand.
At some point in the day, standing at the sink, my thoughts wandered, as they inevitably do, to my shortcomings as a mother. Most days, I really don’t feel like a very good mother. I mean, I’m a passable mother… but I always feel I could be a better mother, even a perfect mother.
I got to thinking about all the mothers I know, and how awesome they are in different ways. She is so great at discipline. I wish I could be like her. She is such a wonderful housekeeper. I’d be a better mother if I were more like her. She shows the love of nature to her little one. I would be better if I did that more.
As I held each mother up to the light, admiring her perfection, if dawned on me (in one of those crystal-clear AHA moments) that despite their collective virtues, not one of these mothers has the complete package a perfect mother should, in my mind. (And I’m sure each of them believes she isn’t a very good mother.)
But here’s the thing… there isn’t a ‘one-size-fits-all’ template for mothers is there? Just as there isn’t one for kids. Of course there are some constants; love is one of them. But my point is this: we are each trying to be perfect in our own way, because we are trying to meet the unique needs of our children.
But we are already built to do that.
When we become a child’s mother, we also get a package of instincts; unexplainable feelings in our hearts that tell us what that child needs.
And maybe, just maybe… it’s possible that right now, in this very flawed instant, I am everything my children need.
And you are too, to your children.
Think about that – you’re already their perfect mother, simply because you’re you.
Feeling shortcomings as a mother is simply an indicator of your desire to give your best to your children.
In this season of my life, I will try to celebrate the perfect package of mothering skills I already have. Because my little ones deserve my very best.
Happy Mother’s Day to you!
{this moment} - This is a Friday ritual, a SouleMama tradition. Just a moment from our week – one I want to treasure and remember.
If April showers bring May flowers, a frost in May must mean good things for June… right?
That’s what I’m going with, anyway.
The weather in my corner of the world has turned warm and wonderful, yet still the nights are often cold.
One morning this past weekend I rose to a morning so very pristine and perfect, I couldn’t resist grabbing my running shoes and quietly slipping out while my husband and kids slept.
It was cold, the air biting and crisp. Every blade of grass wore a perfect layer of frost.
With magnificence, the sun came up, rousing every bit of frost to silvery glory.
Obviously, all of this was a very good excuse reason to stop attempting to jog and take pictures instead. Thank you, nature.
A perfect, frosty May morning. I drank it in as long as I could, then returned home to face the music… and make breakfast for my boisterous little ones.
In this season of my life, mornings like this are a rare and precious gift.
Wishing you a peaceful beginning to your week!
{this moment} - This is a Friday ritual, a SouleMama tradition. Just a moment from our week – one I want to treasure and remember.
If you’re inspired to do the same, you are welcome to link up your ‘moment’ in the comments below.
“Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world.”
See? There’s proof.
The past few months have been sluggishly, stubbornly, sullenly grey – with freezing rain and wind on the side. Welcome to the West Coast.
I had a hard time keeping my chin up this winter – especially the last little while. Can you tell?
But I tried to appreciate those cold, dreary weeks for what they were – the last embrace of winter. The last weeks that justified staying indoors, sewing, reading, and playing way too many rounds of Chutes and Ladders – the Sesame Street edition.
The last days of cooking bone-warming, comforting things like creamy cauliflower soup with bacon on top… because in the winter you put bacon on things… and you might as well make biscuits, too.
And listening to effortlessly comforting music like this… pretty much the greatest children’s music of all time, by the way.
I did try to appreciate those days, while they lasted.
But I’m so glad they’re gone.
Because this spring?
This radiant, incredible, delicious, invigorating, air-couldn’t-possibly-smell-any-better spring?
I’m clinging to this spring, for dear life.
I swear, the sun has never warmed more grateful bones.
A little melodramatic? Perhaps. But it’s the truth.
Oh, and PS – it’s highly likely that even with the advance of spring, we’ll still be listening to Johnny Cash. Because he’s just that good.
{this moment} - This is a Friday ritual, a SouleMama tradition. Just a moment from our week – one I want to treasure and remember.
If you’re inspired to do the same, you are welcome to link up your ‘moment’ in the comments below.
I’ve been away from this space for awhile, and it is life’s fault.
These past weeks have been, for me, one of those times when life requires everything I have and then some. You know those times, right?
When one thinks “I’m going to keep doing {insert any regular life activity here}… and life says “Ha! I don’t think so, missy.”
And who can argue with life? Especially during those times when life gets one into a position from which one cannot argue… a life ‘headlock’.
Those are times when ‘extra’ things, like blogs, go out the window. When all hands are required on deck. When mama puts herself last in order to put everyone else first.
To everything there is a season, however, and I think I’ve finally figured out how to extricate myself from this headlock… here’s hoping.
I hope that you are having a blessed day, wherever you are in life.
I'm Sarah - a writer, a mother, and a creative soul. Welcome!
