ourselves so harshly?
There is this girl I know who...
is beautiful...
is smart...
is an amazing photographer...
has her college degree...
can talk to ANYONE and not sound like an idiot...
has great fashion sense...
has amazing hair...
knows about sports and can talk to people (like my husband) about them...
has a great testimony of the gospel...
dated my husband at one time...
works out often...
eats healthy...
finished school before starting a family...
can cook and bake amazingly...
has great tan legs...
has a beautiful smile...
has a great sense of humor...
is loved by everyone who knows her...
is not me...
and sometimes I'm jealous because I...
don't always feel beautiful...
don't think I'm that smart...
am not amazing at anything...
don't have a college degree yet...
always think of what I should have said after it's too late...
don't always feel cute/sexy/pretty in my clothes...
get frustrated when my hair won't do what I want it to...
knew nothing about sports, except that I was bad at them, until 2 years ago...
sometimes forget the stories from the scriptures and where to find them...
was not THE ONLY GIRL TO EVER DATE JOSHUA...
consider it a work out if I walk up the apartment staircase more than twice in a day especially if I'm carrying a car seat or grocery's up...
crave ice cream, potato chips and Dr. Pepper and often give into my cravings...
got married at 19, prego at 20 and am fallowing my husband to grad school at 21. Which means I may be 40 before I go back to school...
am learning- slowly how to cook and bake healthy yummy meals for my family...
have white, white, WHITE legs with absolutely no muscle definition to speak of...
have spots on my teeth that come from the almost 5 years of braces I had...
sometimes tell jokes that no one laughs at and sometimes I get laughed at when I'm not joking...
have a hard time opening up to people, making friends and keeping friends...
But yesterday I told this amazing girl she looked pretty at church and she told me that sometimes she gets jealous of me. She gets jealous of the way our home is decorated. She gets jealous that I make chore charts and am trying so hard to have a clean and organized home where the spirit can reside. She gets jealous when she see's my list of goals for the week, posted on the fridge. She gets jealous that I didn't wait to start a family and she did.
And having her tell me that changed everything!
It made we want to get out of bed in the morning. It made we want to accomplish something great today!
It made we want to try harder to understand sports and have more to talk about with my husband! It made me want to find something I love to do and to do it because I love it! It made me want to be the
best wife and mama I know how to be! It made me want to ask this friend to lunch today!
And even though it was hard to get up and ready and out the door with a four month old. And even though he was sad and fussy the entire time. And even though he threw up on me, then threw up on her while she held him so I could eat my sandwich....
IT WAS PERFECT!
I learned we all have things that are great about us, but we forget about those things and cover them up and instead we focus on the things we still need to work on.
Even though I have lots of things to work on and be better at, I have decided to celebrate what I already have. I have decided to celebrate my effort in trying to be better, rather than being disappointed when my effort wasn't quite enough. I have decide to stop being mad at myself for not have already known something, done something or gone somewhere. Because that is what life is about! It's about experiencing new things and growing and learning.
The only person I can compare myself to today is who I was yesterday and if I'm moving forward in some way, well then I'm awesome!
And if you don't believe me just look at this...
I. AM. AWESOME!
