Masks and Failure

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So dramatic, right? Trust me when I say this isn’t an easy post to write. Really, who wants to hear that my life isn’t all together? It’s truth. Sometimes the recipes fail. Sometimes the pictures just don’t turn out, and sometimes, this well put together front can be just that, a front. I come back to my blog name though – REAL. It starts with REAL – authentic, me, no masks. It’s hard to take off that mask. Good grief, it’s hard for me to take off that mask with friends, let alone the whole wide internet, to read, to judge, to pass around, but I feel like I’m failing at everything.

How often do you feel like a failure? Last week I was privileged to watch a pre-screening of the movie Mom’s Night Out, opening Mother’s Day weekend. I’m not filling you in on the whole movie. You totally HAVE to go see it for yourself.  You can enter here for a chance to win a trip to the special Hollywood premiere. Then when you do, and you remember that I said I can relate, you will KNOW. I just have to say, I have never laughed or cried so during a movie. I get her. Completely and totally. I can’t even think about the movie without tears coming to my eyes. In fact, I’m crying here right now, and I don’t have time for this, but it’s time to stop, take off the mask, and process.

Confession, I am pretty sure I haven’t cooked a meal all week. I way overbooked myself so I think I ate all of one meal with my family this week. Actually, I ate two, but they sat at the table and I sat in the living room on a recliner, because my feet hurt so bad. I missed my family. Oh, I was here during the day. I didn’t miss kids fighting and all that, but I missed us being together for dinner. We played a game together as a family last night, and it was so awesome. I don’t usually say that. Game nights always turn into chaos and hurt feelings.

My house is a mess. Well, it was until my husband and kids cleaned it up while I was at work yesterday. 5 people, 4 of whom are home all day, make a lot of mess – dishes, dirt, and MESS. With a husband who works 48 hours then has been coming home to help do dishes, laundry, finish up school, and then do the kid shift almost every night this week, it’s been hard for both of us. I give major props to single parents and military families. My hard is nothing in comparison, I realize this.

I have been to the gym once in 3 months. I have paid for the gym all 3 months but I haven’t been. Don’t even think it. I know some of you are because I have heard it once and a million times, “If you really wanted to go you would make time.” Sure, if I wanted to kill myself. Midnight and 1 AM come way too early almost every single night. 5 AM is the only time I could get there with kids too young to stay home alone and home schooling. The only time I could go is the few weekend mornings I have to just be lazy in bed with my husband HOME until around 8 AM. So there, I could sacrifice a bit of time but I really need that time. So instead of going to the gym I feel sorry for myself because I weigh more than I ever have in my life and it isn’t because I am pigging out on all sorts of junk food. Seriously, I barely remember what I ate here at home this week. (Dinner out is in pictures, thank God, since it was for work. Otherwise I wouldn’t remember that either, as good as it was.)

I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough time. Just saying that makes me feel helpless and defeated. Plain and simple, I don’t have enough time.  I don’t have enough time to spring clean my house. I don’t have enough time to sort through change of season clothes. I don’t have time to mop my floor. I don’t have time to bake that really yummy recipe idea that has been forming in my head. I don’t have time to write about my top 5 “must haves” that I finally wrote about….over a month late. I don’t have time to catch up. Wait, I feel like I don’t even have time to breathe these days.

I feel guilty. I feel guilty when friends think I am too busy for them. I feel guilty when my house is a mess. I feel guilty when I forget something I intended to do last week. I feel guilty that I didn’t get to the gym. I feel guilty that my patio hasn’t been cleaned up and ready for summer.  I feel guilty that I haven’t started vegetable seeds. I feel guilty that my kids feel I “work all the time”. I feel guilty that there are cobwebs in the corners of my bedroom. I feel guilty that I didn’t clean my bathroom this week….and maybe not the 2 weeks before that either. I feel guilty when I am on social media for 10 minutes, trying to catch up on life. I feel guilty that I forgot to reply to an email last week.

I feel like I am failing at life. Then, in talking with some friends I found out that we all feel like we are failing, and we all feel so alone in that failure. Sometimes we just have to pull off those masks and discover that in our rawness, in our authenticity, we all feel like failures occasionally, and it isn’t quite so alone. Can you relate?

And then, in the stillness, in the quiet, I hear, “But…..GOD.” My strength, my failings. But….GOD. When I let go of my failings I see that my God is strong enough, capable enough, to work in my life past my failings. My “failings” aren’t always failings but rather my view of what I should be able to do, not what I have been called to do.  When I let go of my conceived notions of life and rely on God’s strength, my failings diminish into His power.
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