It’s 2 a.m. and I can’t sleep.  I have been laying in bed running my lists of “to dos” and being so overwhelmed by my inadequacy to manifest any real change in the length of that list.  I want so badly to be perfect.  A perfect mom, a perfect wife, who possesses a perfect faith and creates  only perfection.  I stack my expectations so high each day as I am “inspired” by the lives and words of others, in turn, measuring myself against those lives and labels.  And each night those expectations topple over and crush me awake. 

I can’t do this to myself anymore.  I can’t do this to my husband or children anymore.  I can’t keep cutting myself down to fit into perfection’s mould.  I can no longer support anyone’s cause but my own.  Especially not any label that is placed upon me because I am so much more than my body.  When I transcend this life, I cannot take anything this world offers me save a vibration equal to my own.  And I came from love.  I will pursue love.  Love of others, love of self, love of now.  I will no longer project success so far into the future that I have no other choice but to submit to failure every day until it manifests.  I will not even count or measure progress because every moment of every day is a win.  Each set back has a perfection of its very own and I can’t even imagine my life without them.  It is like imagining me without scars.  Each of them was a lesson learned; an often repeated lesson. And I never learned what not to do, that was never the lesson. You see, once I was able to get past the pain and see beyond the stumble or the fall, I learned how loved I am.

Here I will place all of the grace I am given on display.  It is often messy, convoluted, at times unintelligible, but I will promise you this: it will always be imperfect and beautifully me.  I can promise this because I am defiantly hopeful.

 UPDATE: That shit got ugly.