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Waking up when you’re a parent

February 3, 2016 / Amy Betters-Midtvedt

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← Note to a Younger Me: 9 Things You Never Thought You Would Do

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Can you look around the space you live in without

Can you look around the space you live in without thinking of all the things you want to change? It can actually be hard.

Ugh this flooring has got to go.

This kitchen table looks so shabby and old.

I bet a coat of paint would make this room look bigger.

I can’t believe we still have mismatched bedroom furniture after 25 years of marriage.

Our kitchen cabinets are embarrassing I think I’ll price a redo again just in case we can swing it.

We say these things to ourselves and sometimes our eyes are so trained to see what could use sprucing in order to match all the Pinterest and Instagram nonsense that we actually see these things in other people’s homes and we think them and even sometimes say them.

It’s like we’ve all absorbed one too many episodes of some home improvement show and we are just on the look out for how to constantly make things better.

And while I’m honestly here for a good home improvement project, it’s the seeds of discontentment we just keep on sowing that brings me down. It’s the constancy of it. Nothing is ever good enough.

The world wants to stir up our hearts to make us believe what we have right now could always be better. So we focus on (and let’s face it buy) all the things.

And it will never fill us up.

And worse, we miss the fact that our shabby kitchen table has all the people we love gathered around it and has served us well for many a celebration.

And our old flooring is in a house with working heat we don’t even have to think about.

And our old outdated kitchen cabinets are filled with food that never seems to run out.

Seeing with eyes of contentment changes all the things.

Gratitude for whatever we already have changes all the things.

Being OK and even happy with what we have right this very minute.

Look around you and see that space you live in with eyes of gratitude and see if a little contentment doesn’t just creep on in.

Take a breath and just let it ALL be enough, just right now as it is. Your brain will be freed up to think of more important things than kitchen tables and your heart will rest easier knowing you have to strive for nothing.

You can just be.

So excited for my friend Clint Edwards No Idea Wha

So excited for my friend Clint Edwards No Idea What I’m Doing: A Daddy Blog!

His new book, Breaking Dad, is out and friends it just great! I know there are dads here (because you all remind me to include you more)…Clint’s perspective and humor is just what we all need, moms and dads alike!

A great read and a great gift!! Enjoy and congrats my friend!

My cleaning hack for the holidays.😂

Also let’s normalize basic bedrooms with hand me down furniture and paint you liked 10 years ago, friends. Life isn’t meant to be a Pinterest board.

Messes are normal and God gave us doors for a reason.

The end.

#parentingteens
##youllmakeitandtheywilltoo #cleaninghacks #holidayhome #holidayhacks #monicascloset

Sometimes it feels like all the things are balance

Sometimes it feels like all the things are balanced and you’re rocking life and then...one thing goes awry.
Maybe it’s a sick kid, and you’re up all night and exhausted.
Or the washer breaks and you run out of clean undies before you can meet the repair man.
Or you get a flat tire on the way home from the grocery store and by the time you’re towed the ice cream has all melted.
And you think...no prob. I’ve still got this, I can deal with this little thing.
When you’re stretched thin one problem doesn’t break you.
It’s when you’re hit with what feels like 1000 little things going wrong at once that you feel like you’ll break.
When the sick kid turns into two then three. And pretty soon you’ve all been home for days. And none of them are sleeping and worry creeps into your heart.
Or when the broken washer is followed by the furnace dying and a car that stops working.
Or the sickness happens alongside a financial misstep that suddenly leaves you short of cash as you scramble to regroup and then suddenly a big kid is crashing and burning.
Or an abundance of doctor and dentist appointments in an already overloaded schedule during a time a spouse needs to stay late at work night after night so you’re going it alone with the troops.
The combinations of what could go wrong at the same time might be endless. And more than one can make you feel like you’ll break.
Because we’re already stretched so thin. We can’t absorb the weight of more than a problem or two at a time.
Our thin stretched selves feel like they can’t take much extra pressure before we will surely snap.
But...we don’t. We can’t.
There are sweet people counting on us.
So we dig deep and plead with God to give us the extra we need. We’re not dealing with tragedy here but we are waging a war.
A war to remember our blessings in the midst of the weight of the everyday.
A war to decide to find the good in the madness.
A war to feel in our bones that God will give us all the strength we need even when life is handing us a million small problems that feel like the weight of the world.
This too shall pass friends. And in the meantime God has got our back...we just need to lean in to him.

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