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Meanwhile, in real life...

  I just want to say...

  I realize that this season of our life, with a four-year-old and two-and-a-half-year-old, happens to feature lots of cute poses and lovely scenes of us sipping tea. My life, as seen on Instagram, looks pretty smooth. 

   In real life, it definitely doesn't always look like this. I don't share as much of the nitty-gritty parenting challenges now that my kids are getting older. I was happy to be transparent about the difficult side of being a parent of babies, and about the wild mood swings of toddlers and assorted misadventures. But as they grow, the "hard parts" get more complicated, and more weighty. I'm just not gonna share all my kid's sins with you; I want to protect their privacy in some of these things, out of love for them. 

   So yeah, I've become the mom who mainly just shares the cute pictures and the sweet adventures.

   I know, I don't love it either.

   But like I said, that's not how it is all the time, even in this season, and it definitely didn't look like this AT ALL in other seasons. 

   Mama's of babies, I see you. I remember the exhaustion so deep it hurts, and the days when nothing gets done (but really, you've actually done so much), and the wells of emotion that come with sleep deprivation, tiny baby fingers, and not remembering when you last took a shower... but also just wanting to stare at your beautiful child a little longer. I remember having forty dirty diapers in my house. We will be in that season again sometime, and I have not forgotten it in this season of a little bit more quiet and calm.

   This season we're in is not because I finally, suddenly, "figured it out"- I didn't break the secret code that enables moms to read books aloud over lunch without someone setting the house on fire. It's not my cleverness or determination or whatever. It's just a season- it arrived, so I am enjoying it while it's here, and winter is gonna come and turn this place into a madhouse. Seasons are not to my credit. They come according to God's timing, and they teach us, and then they change.

  I guess my point is- mama friends, it doesn't have to look like this. I'm not doing anything so cool, it's just where God has us right now. When you see us reading classics by candlelight here, if there's ever a twinge of "maybe I'm not doing enough" or "maybe I'm not good enough", feel free to scroll back through my memories to the times my kids gagged up food into my hands in line at Costco, or pooped on our friends floor, or screamed at everyone that made eye contact.

   Actually, I didn't post photos of any of that stuff. Because, like I said, I don't want to humiliate my children inadvertently. I am trying, I promise, to bear my own heart and struggles a bit more freely again. I'm having a hard time with it, but I'm trying.
  In the meantime, please know, I am not perfect and my kids are not perfect and my house is not perfect and our life is not perfect and nothing about me at all is even remotely perfect   
                             B  U  T   
                                       our God is.

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