January Woes

January is a dark month for me. This is my thirty-fifth January and I have now had enough of them that I automatically dread them. I know what’s coming. I know this month is bad for me. I try to be intentional with how to combat it, but it’s always ugly.

We’re half way through January 2019 and I have already found myself praying for the sixth time, “God, how many start overs can I have?”

Start over with being kinder to my kids. Start over with trying to be on time to things. Start over with healthy eating. Start over with going to bed early. Start over with more time with Jesus. You name it. I am so. sick. of. starting. over.

I have a picture of how I want to be. In fact, I am a woman of lists and I even sat down one night (late night, breaking my “bed early goal’ and “healthy eating goal“ [I was eating handfuls of chocolate chips]) and wrote a detailed list of what a perfect Manda would be like.

Let me tell you, everything seems possible as I am stuffing my face with junk and staying up ridiculously late, living the tomorrow is a new day mantra.

I did this in 2018, too. Do you know how many “start overs” I had last year? Maybe 32,745. All very similar things as 2019. None of which I could ever perfect.

As I was driving home from visiting some family today, I had quiet in the car as all my kids slept. The thought occured to me, again as I was making plans for tomorrow is a new day, that I can’t do this another year. I just can’t. I can’t keep living in the day after day after day feeling failure.

I even noticed that these expectations did indeed hold heaviness. We always hear they do, but as I was driving in the silence, I felt it. Like a twenty-pound boulder heavy on my heart, not my shoulders, my heart.

I can’t keep doing this in 2019 and I definitely can’t do this for the next decade or four decades or six. I just can’t.

All these things tell me one thing – I am trying to change the wrong thing.

This whole topic is a leftover from my Year of Unapologetic. There’s something deeply rooted inside that tells me I am not enough and that I must ALWAYS improve. That I CAN perfect if I whip myself into it. That if I work hard enough and beat myself into submission, I can do all the impossible and then some. I can conquer it and I can be perfect.

I mean, I feel I have had moments of being “put together”. They lasted maybe 2 minutes, but I remember it. And in most cases, it was insanity to maintain.

But it needs to stop. And it ends when I decide to quit.

That starts with refusing to continue the rat race of who’s losing what weight with what product, what method. Who’s training for what. Who got a new car or new addition to her house or decluttered half her belongings or took a trip to Timbuktu. It has to start with quitting it all.

And friends, I’m ready.

It’s a new adventure. It’s the unknown and maybe lonely. It’s being misunderstood and unacknowledged. It’s being misjudged and maybe some talk behind my back and fake friends disappearing. But it’s freedom for me and sweet surrender in Jesus.

It’s okay to just be. It’s been said in so many circles, “We’re human beings, not human doings,” and it just might be time I live that.

Because these start over days don’t need to be. I don’t have to wake up to success or failure, I can just wake up and be grateful. I can let the words of those striving breeze by me and just be. I can choose to walk forward on my own path.

January is hard. And it’s ugly right now, but the last thing I need is more pressures and more forced perfection. I fail daily and that will never change, no matter how much brain-washing I do. I can improve, but not in the pursuit of impressing anyone or to increase my value.

So there. That’s my declaration of autonomy for anyone that cares, but specifically for me. Really, just me. And tomorrow I am waking up differently, and I tear up at the thought.

Year of Home

I’m a stay-at-home mom. My hubby and I have four kiddos under seven. While most people assume our household is chaotic, in all honesty, our chaos has tamed compared to what it was just a year ago when my youngest was a baby.

We decided four biological babies are our number, so for the first time in my mom history I am not expecting (or have a newborn) at the time my last baby turned 18 months.

This has made my wings flutter a little. Flap with independence and freedom. Obviously not from motherhood, but from the concentrated focus of babyhood.

However, allowing myself to stretch in autonomy opened my eyes to the many yeses I could finally commit to, leaving my babies and hubby at home.

As you can probably guess, my wings started moving and my goal list in 2018 blew up with new ideas and reaching out and meeting people and serving. I was running. Some weeks, running half the week or more to things that had nothing to do with my kids. And I LOVED it. LOVED IT!!!!!

If you could see me as I write this, you’d see me shaking my head and rolling my eyes.

It’s at this moment, as my wings were flapping and my gaze was reaching further and further into the future that I got a gracious punch in the gut.

My husband switched his job. This changed my schedule of freedom and the jingle in our pockets to an almost starting over mode.

He needed a new job. He was at total burnout with no hope of renewal, so it was time. But the truth is, I needed a change too. And in my case, a wake up call.

My heartbeat is to help people. I love to love. I love to serve. I love to share LIFE and JESUS with anyone that is willing to listen.

But you know what? As I did more and more of that, my family was getting the leftovers of those times. I’d give my shiny best to so many others and I’d come home with just chintzy scraps of sanity.

Something had to change.

Something HAS to change.

So that’s where I’m at. That is my adventure of 2019.

It’s time to refocus. It’s time to be intentional. It’s time to build my home to be more homey. More homey in conversations. In fun and relationships. In special one-on-one moments. In cleanliness. In organization. It’s time I make the homefront of my young family my biggest passion and mission in life.

I’ll admit, it feels a lot less glamorous than Year of Unapologetic in 2018. It even stings a little to let go of some of my opportunities outside of my home, but this must be done.

My role as mother and wife are my callings right now. I may not have anything spectacular to show to you or the world or anyone else (that might remotely care), but I’ll make a gargantuan difference in five very important souls.

And the fruit of putting them first? Well, that probably won’t be revealed right away either (or it might? maybe in small doses!?!?), but the truth is I KNOW it will produce fruit eventually. In my marriage, in my relationship with each of my children, and definitely in me.

So here I go! Year of Home 2019. Like my last Year of Unapologetic, I bet it will start one way and birth something totally unexpected.

I can’t wait!