I have some very beautiful classy friends. I'm talking they have on a different coordinating nail polish color every time I see them and they look ready to go on a date any second even if they are only headed to the grocery store. I don't even think some of them own a pair of sweat pants. I don't even know if they know what those are. I feel like I could enter a beauty pageant and consider it a huge success when I have my teeth brushed and a bra on before 11. In my mind, my house is so clean and beautiful and I have a french manicure and there are fresh flowers on my table and people knock on my door begging if they can take pictures of my beautiful home so that millions can pin their hearts outs and enjoy. Unfortunately, that is only in my brain and no one sees that house or my mental french manicure. The reality is that sometimes I push the dryer button 4 times because I don't want to fold the clothes, and my living room usually looks like a garage sale gone bad.
It is true that life does not have to be perfect to be good. Pinterest only exists on my computer but what is real is the happy mess in my house, what is real is hitting balloons with spatulas in the living room with Liv in her diaper because it's too hot for clothes and laying outside in the grass getting cavities because we've had so many otter pops and the only exercise we get is our daily wagon ride and perhaps a run through the sprinklers if we are feeling athletically inclined. I always think about beauty as the houses in parade of homes or chandeliers but I'm realizing that I do have beauty in my life that will never be in a magazine but it is beautiful to me. Some of the beauty around me is Liv and I sharing a maple bar for breakfast this morning. (Maple bars are always beautiful to my eyes, less beautiful to my hips following the ingestion.)
Or doing chalk first thing in the morning because she's been dreaming about doing it all night and she can't even wait 3 more minutes to brush her teeth or tame her rats nest bed head:
I am learning that Anne Frank knew what she was talking about, and that there is a heck of a lot of beauty around me. I think there is beauty in the fact that there is so much life around me and that I have a faithful sidekick who wants to be apart of whatever I am doing and thinks I know what I'm talking about and when I say it's time for bed she says, "No thanks," because she feels like there is so much playing left. That's her full time job. Playing.
I still don't like how play dough gets under my nails from rolling a whole family of snakes for Liv but today, I do believe there may have been some reptile beauty involved in that when I showed Liv that forks make cool designs on snake backs. She was hooked. I can only hope she will always be that easily dazzled by my brilliance. 
Think of a pet that requires a lot of work and then times that by a bazillion and that is what it is like to have a baby and I'm not going to say that I think white chunky spit up is beautiful, but on Sunday when the speaker may have been a little boring, Grace and I lingered longer in the 1990's ugly mothers lounge rocker and suddenly I just felt that she is one of the most beautiful parts of my whole life.
Just because I still have nail polish on from 2 months ago, shove all the toys that are vomited out of their bins in the coat closet when guests come over, dyed all my white towels a hideous pink orange color because I still don't always separate my whites and colors in laundry, and there are crushed fruit loops under my rug does not mean that I cannot still see that my life has a lot of beauty going on in every blah ordinary day.
Yes I appreciate art and also find that very beautiful, but sometimes so are maple bars and play dough snakes with fork markings . Sometimes beauty right now, to me, is in the form of good scripture study, sitting on the grass outside the mailbox, talking to my sister, the one shelf I in the pantry I organized 3 weeks ago, laughing so hard I sound like a barking seal/foghorn compbined, a bowl of cinnamon life at the end of the day, dandelion blowing with Liv when she inhales and sucks in all the dandelion instead of blowing out, getting a new air freshener for the van, side walk chalk murals so horrible that no one can tell what I even tried to draw, feeling understood by a true friend, the 42 seconds when all the laundry in the house is clean and put away, the growing peas in our garden, Grace falling asleep, the shelf display at King Soopers, overweight squirrels on the back porch, and people I know that are meant to be in my life. There is a heck of a lot of beauty all around me if I decide to see it.
Forget pinterest.
Forget pinterest.
No comments:
Post a Comment