OK first let me say this is my oppinion and I am judging no one but myself here.

I have spent the summer a little lost. Ok actually allot lost.lol I have been forced to take a look at myself and find out again just who I am. I can tell you that losing Pappa last year really had a huge effect on me. He was my hero and one of the best people I have ever had the privalege to know. I am so blessed I got a front row seat with him. He was kind and loving and everything I wish I could be. In fact my sister and I say just about every time we talk how we wish we could be more like him. I think he and I definately shared the same off beat sense of humor but I wish I had more of his patience with people. Anyway, I am getting off track. Losing him last year made me face a few things. Mainly how life is short and you just never know when everything you thought you knew can change in a moment. Also how people are so much more important than the little things  we worry about day to day.

So I have been trying to figure out just who I am again and what things I have been trying to be that I am not. I can't tell you how suprising it was to me when I decided to homeschool that I was automatically inviting everyone and their brother to judge my parenting and ability to teach. Not to mention to quiz my children on what they know compaired to their public school counterparts. I almost collapsed under all the pressure. And I tried my hardest then to become supermom and meet everyones expectations of what I should be. One big problem arose from all this. I lost myself and became allot more anxious all of the time. Because, as Johnny and June Cash so aptly put it " It ain't me babe." lol

"It is a hard thing for us moms to just be ourselves. We are constantly caught up in the era of defining ourselves be what kind of mom other people see us as. Basically there seems to be a continuum where mothers at one end are sporting professionally designed graphic art masterpieces that read " Super Mom's are the Best and By the Way, My Kid Beat Your Kid in the Spelling Bee...Again". At the other end there is a ragtag looking hand scribbled poster that reads "Slacker Moms Rule... and the Thought of Spending Hours Memorizing Spelling Words Makes Me Nautious."" From a Book by Lysa Terkeurst called The Bathtub is Overflowing but I Feel Drained.

I don't really fall into any of these catagories. I tend to lean more toward the Slacker Mom. I am no where near Super Mom. And the harder I try to be Super Mom the more I fall short it seems. I don't like labels. I just want to be the kind of mom God intends for me to be and do the best I can for the children he has entrusted to my care. I have found that allot of these supermoms (by no means all) are doing so much with their kids because they are a reflection on them. They think that if their child excels then people will say" Wow that kid scored three goals today. He must have a great mom"

Is having a smart,successful kid a bad thing? Of course not, but when we do what we do for the recognition it brings us then we become out of balance. If we hover over our children all of the time it tells them that we don't trust them to be able to succeed on their own.

Please hear my heart here. I am not saying helping is bad. I am saying when we step in too much and too often we are in danger of sending our child the message that we think they are incapable.

On the other hand we don't want to be the slacker mom either. Who doesn't do anything because they are too tied up in their own things. It isn't that these mom's don't care. On the  contrary they tend to focus on relationships over activities.

So what is a mom to do? I am trying to take an honest evaluation of what is realistic for me and what is necessary for my family and trying to find balance for the journey. Balance, doing what I can with what I have been given based on what is realistic.

My kids never look perfect. I am happy if their faces and clothes are clean. (which if you know my kids you will see what a rarety that is). I take joy in descovering every day more about my children and who they are. I am trying to find some of the super mom traits that fit me and still relax enough to let my kids be kids. I will let you know how it goes.lol I want to be more like Pappa who never worried about taking the time to teach me a game or play a game with me or teach me to tie my shoes. He also still managed to get things done. He took care of his things but they didn't own him. He realized that people are more important. Not saying he was a saint by any means but remember I am looking through a granddaughter's eyes. lol

What a great job I have. Being constantly challenged to be the best of myself I can be while having a front row seat to see who my children are and guide them into the adults they will become. (hopefully teaching them to spell and not use run on sentences like their mother.lol)