The Value of Saran Wrap

Life gets crazy.  It occurred to me earlier today - as I was trying to stuff the saran wrap back into the cupboard where it usually fits - that at least once of a year I end up on a quest to make things fit in our kitchen cabinets.  It usually happens in January and today's little 'stuff it, crush it, make it work' incident was a perfect example of why this phenomenon occurs. 

Everything gets all jumbled in my head from this crazy life, the same way the cupboards are all messed up.  The casual observer would see nothing wrong, but to me everything is just off.  And there really is no solution for this jumble - other than a calmer life - the one that I have spent 38 years trying to find.

Yesterday I read these two posts back to back and they just made me laugh at how real and dead on they are.  Enjoy them:

Best Case Scenario

9 Reasons I Don't Read Magazines Anymore

Right?!

And since reading them I have been stuck in this crazy loop of reality, sarcasm and pictures that randomly flash through my head.  I am not even sure that makes sense.  Then today I came across this picture on Pinterest that left my head spinning,

Click here to read the entire head spinner.

 

Without a doubt there is more than one area of my life that would benefit from a little more self discipline but at this stage in my life I find nothing other than my failures written there.  I can't change much of my life right now ~ my mother in law is sick, getting better for the long term doesn't sound like an option and my job has become the support system on overdrive indefinitely. 

 

Having my dishes done certainly won't hurt things...but they aren't a matter of self discipline for me.  Sometimes leaving them is the only act of sanity that I can grasp.

 

Anyway, before I could beat myself up too awful much this afternoon - though I did, because I had a meltdown with my five year old and then again on the phone with my mom - I saw this post.  I am not the world's worst mom.  Or the world's worst housekeeper, dish washer, bathroom cleaner, wife, daughter in law, food cooker {though lately that has been a subject of great debate at our house}, or really anything else.  The world tells us lies. 

 

A clean sink isn't where my value is found.

 

A perfectly staged house isn't where I find comfort.

 

Cabinets that barf all over me aren't a sign of poor self discipline.

 

They are a sign of too much to do, in too short of a time in the midst of a set of circumstances far from my control.  I would love to have that calmer life that I have sought for so many years.  In fact, if I could go back in time, I would have used that one day several weeks ago when I thought to myself "This winter might be downright boring" to work on a few projects that are bugging the daylights out of me today.  But I can't go back and I have to trust that I needed that down day as a calm before the storm that hit.

 

I am still laughing at the real life best case scenario pictures...and the tongue in cheek pictures of magazines...and I am extremely thankful for the reminder that I am not a failure.  I am a stressed out mama...and I pray that one day, someday, and hopefully soon, there will be time to figure out how to get the saran wrap to fit in the cupboard well.

 

Until then, there might be dishes piling up and a cupboard door that doesn't close the way it should.  But I am not a failure.  No where even close.