Every so often, my mind begins to mull something over, creating a mental itch that won't stop until I pause and take a moment to scratch it.  Unfortunately, conditions in my daily life rarely encourage such introspection. If anything, the things in my life discourage introspection. 

Being the mom of 5 kids, homeschooling them, dealing with the myriad decisions/complications/situations that arise with ownership of a 126 year old house, managing/investing in friendships and neighborhood relationships, cleaning house, planning and cooking meals, working out, finding time to sit down and have a quiet time with the Lord, possibly engage in something moderately creative like knitting or drawing or painting....well, it all adds up to a very full day. Not an overwhelming day, just a day nicely and neatly filled up. Ok, occasionally overwhelming. 

If you noticed I didn't include my husband in my list of things that discourage introspection, it's because Kyle is one of the best things for me in that regard. He is so good to be a sounding board for my thoughts, to draw me out, to encourage me, to kick me out the door to run, to be a listening ear or a ballast for my tilt.  Without him, yes, things would quickly overwhelm.

There was a time when I regularly followed a few design blogs, home school blogs, cooking blogs or life blogs that inspired me.... until they stopped inspiring me. They became mirrors held up in my face as proof that I wasn't doing it right. I wasn't doing enough.  I wasn't switching out rugs or paint colors or holiday decor fast enough. Or buying a new couch every few months. Or spending the right amount of time or money on activities for my kids. Or feeding my kids the right amount of anti-gluten or farm-raised graham crackers or Amish-smushed peanut butter. I wasn't building water features for the purpose of allowing my kids the developmentally appropriate "tactile" play.

Inspiration morphed into condemnation.

It became toxic. So I pulled back and said, enough. These bloggers are people, too; they just adjust the filters on their photos to take off the dull light that we all live among sometimes. They appear to have time to put on full makeup every morning, and let's be frank: I have neither the time nor inclination to EVER do that.  

Not only that, they have SPONSORS! They change out their houses and furnishings and every other little thing because they have people who pay them to or give it to them for free! So there's that.

Of all those types of blogs, I lean most toward design blogs because I love good design. It feeds my creative soul. And I only recently started messing around on Instagram, simply because I have a few friends I follow on it. Plus, if there's a beautiful moment that springs up in my life that I think needs to be shared, I can do that using Instagram whereas I may not be ready or able to do a blog post. 

The thing is, I've fallen back into the same traps, I think.  

On the plus side, I've found many amazing people out there, posting some amazing content and somehow finding hours in their day to do Insta-stories with lots of crazy notes and graphics all over them....with a gazillion followers. (I'm amazed there are that many people in the world who care about all the things everyone else is doing.) They are definitely inspiring! And often encouraging. Yet...in my own humble opinion, painting a pretty unrealistic picture of life for everyone else. I wonder again, what things DON'T get photographed. Lots of real life, I bet. 

On the negative side, I see all the endless perfection and beauty and perfectly styled rooms and these husband and wife design teams who can devote their waking hours to DIYing together...and it seems all a bit TOO perfect.

I'm a runner, and I discovered all these other runners out there who daily post pictures of their run times, paces, mileage and they're actually running mid-photo...who TAKES these photos? I don't understand!! It's not enough to feel like my walls aren't painted the gleaming white everyone else's seems to be (although I'm not an all-white kinda girl)...now I have to feel bad that my 4 mile run wasn't at a 6:50 pace? 

I'm not saying Instagram is bad, except when I fall into the hole and realize that it's really really late and I have to get up in the morning. And run. Hehe. But I do think it feeds the Beast.

The Beast of "Not Good Enough." "Not Doing Enough."

The Beast of Discontent.

As the owner of a 126 year old home in Chicago, I am all too aware of how expensive it is to turn a fixer-upper into the beautiful "after" images we see in our head.  I daily walk on floors which seriously need to be sanded and refinished and can give you a splinter the size of a Sequoia if you're not careful. I take a shower every day under the ugliest shower fixture you have EVER seen, and I would love to change it out to something black and simple and beautiful, but that's low on my priority list these days.  I have a kitchen with more wood than a forest, but not in a good way. Plaster walls that are cracking and need attention, but can't be attended to just yet.  I have a roof that needs to be replaced, but the saving fund for it just got redirected.  I have a back deck that was landscaped quite....curiously....and I'm thinking that's a few years away on the timeline.

I posted a picture on Instagram today of the kids and I making No-bake peanut butter cookies. They were delicious. What I can't get a photo of is the smell emanating from our basement because something is going on with our sewer pipes. This will be the second time in 2 weeks we've called a plumber out. Thankfully, there is nothing leaking or seeping up from our drains, but there is clearly something amiss because we should NOT be smelling what we are. 

In other harsh realities, we walked the first contractor through our house last night with the list of "required mitigation" given us by the Chicago Health Dept because the flaking lead paint on our windowsills and filtering down from the flaking topcoat of plaster in our closets....caused Wilder to have an elevated lead level in his blood. So the City came out and inspected our house, and told us exactly what has to be "wet scraped and painted"....just all the baseboards, door frames, window sills, etc. all over the house. By a city licensed contractor. And we would qualify for financial assistance if we made a little less money.  But if we made a little less money, we'd be starving. 

So far, HGTV hasn't volunteered to help out.

It's one of those things that I have yet to see pop up on a design blog.  Which is curious because it's a thing. A serious thing.  

I promise, I'll tell more about that situation at a later date.  It is an ongoing saga in which Ashley and Kyle daily struggle to rejoice in tribulations as they build patience, character and hope. (Insert brave face smile!...there is no emoji for that).

My thoughts lead me here....All of our natural desires to create beauty in our homes, to raise godly children (for those of us who desire that), to love each other and live our lives in meaningful ways...those are good things.  But when coupled with social media in all its infinite forms (most of which I'm blissfully ignorant), it has the effect of yeast feeding on sugar. Before you know it, you have a bubbling cauldron of fermenting stuff which takes on a life of its own.  

If left unchecked, your focus on the rest of the world and its "lovelies" swings back around to you and all your "unlovelies". It begins to eat at you destructively...to further the metaphor, it feeds on comparison and breeds contempt and covetousness. We stop seeing our world with gratitude and joy and start wondering why we're doing it all wrong. Why our lives don't lend themselves to such beautiful photos every moment of every day. 

Yeast is a beautiful thing, but it needs to be put to good use.  It gives life within the right context.  It needs to be added to flour, given some time to eat more and grow more, and then....be pounded back down.  That pounding is critical, although a royal pain. It puts things back into perspective.  It allows the molecules to interact and change.  Without getting all scientific, the yeast is necessary for development, but it does its best work when combined with other things and pounded a bit.  Then, all that mess needs boundaries: a container in which to be baked.  

We need beauty.  We need to be inspired. We need to be encouraged and reminded that life is beautiful, even amidst the bad stuff that happens all around us and to us. We need to take the beauty and work it into our lives in such a way that it grows and fosters development and creativity in us. 

There will also be the ugly, hard, real-life things that do happen and will happen to us. Things that aren't Instagram-worthy, blog-worthy or sponsor-worthy, but necessary. The lead paint situations that you don't anticipate. Money issues. Job troubles. Health problems.  All those things are the poundings, the kneadings, the hard slaps onto the countertop.  They will mix in with the beauty, the ideas, the "potential" - and will work their magic in me.  

More precisely, as it says in Romans 5: "And we also have joy with our troubles because we know that these troubles produce patience. And patience produces character, and character produces hope. And this hope will never disappoint us, because God has poured out his love to fill our hearts. God gave us his love through the Holy Spirit, whom God has given us." 

And the boundaries. We need to remember that all is not as it seems in social media world. We need not feel pressure to live lavishly. We need not feel pressure to style our homes in a thoroughly unlivable way. We need not feel as though where we are now is not good enough.  

Where I am now is exactly where I'm supposed to be.

This is my container. These "problems" are working something beautiful and lasting in me.

I am within my boundaries. 

Here I will grow and create something beautiful.