Week 6 Report

Another week of imperfection down.  I'm learning to embrace the imperfection and accept "enormous effort" as good enough. :)  I'm learning to have grace with myself and give myself credit where credit is due.  This is a huge lesson for me!  I think one thing that has helped me with this is that I've been reading my journals from age 14 to the present.  I was a huge journal keeper!  I've learned that some things haven't changed much in 25 years.  I've always been trying to eat healthy, exercise, read my scriptures daily, pray daily, and do many other good things.  I've gone through periods of great success and not-so-great success.  I think that is just life!  Trying to find balance and make good choices among so many different choices.  As I read about how hard I tried and I saw myself beating myself up and feeling guilty for every little imperfection, I just wanted to go back in time and tell myself, "Give yourself a break, Sweetie!  It's okay.  You're a good person.  God loves you.  Don't be so hard on yourself."  It's interesting how I couldn't say that to myself then, and it's hard to say that to myself now, but seeing this big picture of my life spanning many many years just showed me that I am a good person. Ha, ha, it sounds funny to say that, but that's what I concluded.  It's so easy to dwell on our weaknesses and the areas we fall short, but it doesn't really help.  I mean, it's good to recognize where we need to improve, and set goals to improve, and strive to improve, but it's also important to recognize the good that we do.  I saw a lot of good in me in those journal pages, but I couldn't see it at the time.  We need to recognize that people love us, warts and all, and we need to love ourselves, warts and all.  I think I'm getting a little bit better at that.

I should probably end on that positive note, but I want to talk about something I dealt with last week.  This picture represents my moment of shame last week:

That is a drawer I broke in a fit of rage over...nothing!  Well, obviously it was something, but it was hard to put my finger on what.  I came home from teaching and was disappointed to see that my teenagers hadn't started cooking dinner for the family as instructed (I make my own food).  Wednesdays are rushed because everyone has to be at the church by 7 and I get home at 6:15.  I started frantically cooking for them and for myself, my son couldn't find his shoes that I had seen on the floor two minutes before, we couldn't find a hammer he needed, my dinner wasn't yummy, and everyone was running late.  I opened that drawer to look for a hammer and something was stuck in the drawer making it hard to open.  Instead of calmly un-sticking the item, I just kept yanking that drawer until it broke.  I wanted to break it!  I couldn't understand what was wrong with me.  This was SO unlike me.  I drove my son to scouts and did some major pondering.  Why was I so upset?  I think I was upset because I felt like I couldn't stay on top of things, I couldn't parent the way I wanted (remember I'm taking a course on "Peaceful Parenting" and I felt really awesome at it this night---NOT), we couldn't get places on time, and to top it all off, I couldn't comfort myself with food.  I couldn't just stick something yummy in my mouth to make myself feel better.  I had to just feel that anger and I didn't know how to deal with that, so I broke a drawer.  It was not a happy feeling and it gave me a lot to think about.  I'm not sure why I'm sharing it, but I think maybe I am because it's important for me to understand the way I have used food to help me with emotions and to find other ways to deal with my emotions other than eating....or breaking drawers! LOL!  The drawer is fixed now, and I haven't been having such anger since.  Phew!  I'm still figuring all of this out.  I've been neglecting personal prayer and scripture study lately, so that could have something to do with it.  At any rate, attending to those things is a good place to start!