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!
