Editor’s note: The author, lawyer Brooke McIntosh Crump, is a mom in Mt. Gilead and writes bi-weekly for the Speckled Paw Times.
I have always struggled with perfectionism. That’s funny because I’m not always perfectly coiffed and put together, my home is far from being featured in a magazine, and my big blended family is messy but beautiful. I fall short of my own expectations every single day and I don’t think that I’m alone in that sentiment.
As women and mothers there is a great deal of responsibility resting on our shoulders every day. I envision for myself a future where I really do have it all together. I picture myself rising at 5 a.m. every day, heading to the gym after that first cup of coffee and getting some work done before I head to court. I imagine arriving home in my perfectly tidy car to my home where everything is in its place. I would then have dinner mostly prepared via crockpot and would spend my evening reading and playing with my son, maybe even followed up by a nice walk with my family.
That’s my expectation. Is that my reality? Hah. I work late most nights which means that most mornings I wake up feeling like I was hit by a bus. My morning workout consists of me running in heels with damp hair into the courthouse after I’ve done preschool dropoff looking like something the cat dragged in.
I think we all have expectations for our lives and I think that setting goals is important. Self improvement is built on striving for more. But at what point does our obsession with expectation harm our current reality? I have recently come to the conclusion that everything in life boils down to our perception and mindset of our circumstances. I have a good and full life, but I am always, always working toward improving myself. I think that’s important, but I think that I can sometimes lose sight of the forest for the trees.
I have never been one to care much about home décor, but lately I have scoured Pinterest making plans for our home. I blame it on our recent home renovation, and I’ll honestly say that the changes I’ve made are a big improvement, but now I’m currently obsessed with making plans and budgeting for the next project. When we moved into our current home it was the first home that my husband and I owned together, and we were just thrilled to have found a place we wouldn’t be moving from any time soon. Our kids were so happy with our home that my now 17-year-old stepson didn’t mind sharing a bunk bed with his now 5-year-old brother. At the time, I didn’t care that the home wasn’t perfectly updated. But now I do.
My best friend, who has an immaculate home, recently told me she now understands how people get to the point of complete disarray, because they give up. She was feeling the pains of keeping up with it all. It was funny to me because I thought that was so obvious. Keeping it all together doesn’t come naturally to me; I’ve always had to work so hard at everything.
There have been times where I have truly given up on different areas of life. For instance, when I found out I was expecting in law school a sweet family member gave me the advice to just focus on school and surviving pregnancy, and to forget the rest. I took that to heart. I didn’t clean much of anything during that time and I abandoned many of my social commitments. It worked. I survived law school and I gave birth to a beautiful and healthy baby boy. But our home was a total disaster during that time and I specifically remember struggling with the absence of certain friends. I essentially gave up in certain areas of my life so I could get through others.
I really do believe that you can have it all, but you can’t have it all at one time. You would be hard pressed to find any mom whose expectation matches her reality in every single aspect of her life. At any given time, moms have about 5,000 browser tabs open in their heads; there’s dentist appointments, haircuts, soccer practice, laundry and dishes. We expect ourselves to drink half our body weight in water a day, hit the gym and keep our eyebrows on fleek.
And then that whole work thing? Yeah, there’s a lot going on with that, too. We expect ourselves to budget like Dave Ramsey, organize like Marie Kondo and wash our faces like Rachel Hollis. We all fall short every single day and repeat the vicious cycle. But what exactly do we give up on? If you don’t regularly clean your home, you will get bugs. If you don’t regularly groom your eyebrows, you will walk around with fuzzy caterpillars on your face (throwback to my high school days). If you don’t give a great deal of effort in parenting, your child can fall behind. If you don’t give it your all at work, well … a lot of us put food on the table with that whole “job” thing.
This mama is tired, yall. Lately I’ve been feeling like I need to close out a mom browser tab or two, but they all seem pretty important to me. Maybe one day I’ll stumble on the website that does actually have the secret to waking up at 5 a.m.