Everything's Not Awesome

I don’t know about your house, but mine has been taken over by all things Lego Movie 2. My older two boys have seen the movie, we have the Lego's (yay, marketing!), we listen to the songs every.single.day. You could say it is the “thing” of the moment around here.

There is a song in the movie that is supposed to get stuck in your head. It literally has the line “this song is going to get stuck inside your head”. However, that is not the song that got stuck in mine. Right now, I am in the middle of preparing to speak to a group of moms about motherhood. I am not totally sure I feel like I am the right person for the job but last week my mom said “why not? You are THIRTY-FIVE and have FOUR kids”. Thanks for the reminder, mom! So, as I think about motherhood, I keep thinking about a song from the Lego Movie 2.

It starts out with:

Everything's not awesome

Everything's not cool

I am so depressed

Everything's not awesome

Motherhood right now, anyone? Winter. Snow. Kids you can’t send outside. Health issues. Marriage in close quarters. Anyone? Please tell me I am not alone. I already wrote last month about given up. This is a rough season around here.

BUT that is not where the song ends and it isn’t how we have to live. It doesn’t have to be either totally awesome or totally not awesome. The song goes on (and this is the part I love)…

“Everything's not awesome

Things can't be awesome all of the time

It's an unrealistic expectation”

Did you catch it? Read it again. “Things can’t be awesome all of the time, that is an unrealistic expectation.” I 100% agree with that statement. It just isn’t how life works and if we want it to always be awesome we are going to be disappointed and that won’t feel awesome so we will be disappointed in our disappointed feelings and it becomes a WHOLE NOT AWESOME THING. GIVE UP! GO BACK TO BED! DON’T EVEN BOTHER WITH HAIR OR CLEAN PANTS. EVERYTHING IS NOT AWESOME!

STOP.

Read the next lines…

“But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try

To make everything awesome

In a less idealistic kind of way”

Oh, well, that is a different approach. We could try to make what we can awesome. We can just try our best. We can still try to be our best selves. We can wear clean pants. We can fix our hair pretty. We can get up before our kids to have some quiet space (I will harp on this until the day I die. It is my thing. Not even sorry.) We can try in a less idealistic kind of way. It won’t all be awesome. It just won’t. We don’t live in that made up world. We live here in the messy middle life. But we can still try to influence our families and world for good (or, for awesome) when and where we can.

And some days we need the last line of this verse….

“We should maybe aim for not bad

'Cause not bad right now would be real great”

Some days are going to be just shooting for “not bad”. Some days your husband will be out of town, and you will wake up to the sound of vomit, and then your husband’s flight will be delayed and you will end up sounding like Oprah after school…You get a Kindle and You get a Kindle and YOU get a Kindle and YOU get a snack and YOU get candy! And just give mommy a few minutes to pee alone! So we aim for not bad and that is real great right now.  We cut ourselves the slack we would cut our girlfriends and we make it through a less idealistic version of our day but feel awesome because we made it to bed that night.

One final point. The bridge of the song shares an idea of how to pull this less idealistic version of awesome off…”We can make things better if we stick together, side by side, you and I, we will build it together…”. Together. In community. Together with our spouse we can build an awesome family. Together with our friends we can build an awesome village. Going it alone rarely works. We can and need to depend on others. I ask my husband for help. We work together when things are not awesome to figure out how to get back to some version of awesome. We have even sought out help to do that. I have spent pretty much the entirety of my children’s lives seeking other mom’s (of all ages) to do this together. I support them and they support me. Building it together will ALWAYS make it more awesome!

So go be awesome, whatever that looks like, today!

Getting past the fear of shame

Four weeks ago I spoke in front of two groups of ladies on the topic of fearless motherhood. I spoke about shame and judgement and how we called to be those that lift each other up as moms and women. It was incredibly well received. I was told the feedback was great and that many women were uplifted and encouraged by my talk. My talk had been the culmination of months of writing on the topic. I was really excited to move forward, continue writing and trying to find more avenues to speak.

Just days after that event, more than one person made a comment on the grammar and punctuation in a specific Facebook post I had written. All of a sudden, I was front and center for that judgement I had just spoken about. Two things happened as a result of that.

One, I cried for close to two full days.

Two, I stopped writing. At all. I am confessing here that I am immobilized by fear. Fear that I would make another simple (and, I would have thought, forgivable) mistake and someone would decide I needed another lesson.

Just writing this out is making my heart quicken. Tears are forming behind my eyes. I have been told I have great composure and every single time I think about what happened and trying to write again I lose all of my composure.

And it hurts. It still hurts. I went from being so excited to hiding in a home improvement project….see, I don’t have TIME to write, there are walls to paint!...all an excuse. Mostly I am hurt and scared and can’t figure out how to move past it.

Maybe that is the biggest confession. I am caught up in the shame. The shame I have been trying to help others to not dish out and I am having a terrible time rising above it. I am stuck and I don’t like it.

I recently heard the idea that the first step is awareness. Awareness that something isn’t right, awareness that you are doing something destructive, awareness that you are on a path that isn’t getting you where you want to be. So, for a few days I have just been aware. Aware that this pain hurts.

Today I am taking the next step. I am going back to writing…by writing about not wanting to write anymore, of being afraid of writing. I am moving forward even as my heart feels anxious. Even as the tears are kind of making me want to give up.

I wonder why even keep typing? Why put myself out there? Why? Well, those ladies I spoke to are one reason. I helped them and it felt good. I like helping women. I think I have valuable things to share. I can’t let shame stop me from what I believe was a passion put on my heart by God himself. If I stop, the devil wins. I won’t let that happen.

But I won’t say it feels good today. It doesn’t. I hope writing does feel good again. I hope that by writing out how I feel about this shame and judgement I can begin to move past it. That I can move past the fear.

Because I know that the help I was giving others is bigger than the hurt in my heart. Even if it doesn’t feel that way today.