Lesson 1

There was a long stretch of time, probably the majority of my motherhood experience, in fact, that I spent feeling utterly miserable because I wasn't measuring up to the majestic "ideal" I had painted for myself. I don't know where this ideal came from. I'm pretty sure it was an elaborate collage compiled of brief two-dimensional snapshots of motherhood I saw from the amazing mothers all around me. And amazing they were, but I'm sure they had their own struggles just like me. Deep down I knew this, but somehow I was convinced that I was still so much worse at this than everyone else. Even on the days when I mostly had it all together and my children were happy, I would see or maybe even just think about what someone else was doing that looked better than what I was doing, and then I would despair all over again. I constantly held myself and my children to an agonizing regimen of educational outings, militant schedules, strict dress code, and a zero-tolerance behavior policy. I'm sure you can imagine how that worked out for me.

I remember one particular morning when my two daughters were small, I was wrestling them into their car seats after a frazzled morning of throwing ourselves together, impatiently arguing with them because we were trying to get to story time at the library on time. Both girls were crying and I was at my wit's end before it finally occurred to me, "What on earth am I doing??? They don't even like story time! And neither do I! None of us even want to go out today! Why are we going?" I dug deeper and realized the reason why: I was trying to look like a good parent. My friends all took their small children to story time and music programs and infant swimming lessons and those sorts of things. Then we would all go home and blog about our activities, with an overload of cute photoshop-enhanced pictures of our darling children being so well cared for and educated - all with the end goal of looking like we were doing a great job. I don't think we gave much thought to what the kids wanted to do with their time. And to be fair, I lived in an area at the time where parents were very harshly judged, and we had to look like we were on top of our game at all times to avoid being reported to CPS. But at that point I realized I was tired of looking like a "good" parent; I wanted to actually be a good parent! But how does one do that? THAT, my friends, is the holy grail.

It honestly wasn't until my thirties that I had an epiphany: If I stop comparing myself to everyone around me, I will probably be happier! I know, I know, grown-ups have been telling me this my whole life. But I think it's kind of like the touching-a-hot-stove learning curve. You have to figure this one out for yourself. Once I did, it was life changing. Before, I could never be truly happy even when life was nearly perfect, because the grass was always somehow greener on the other side of the proverbial fence. But once I started counting my own blessings instead of someone else's, the grass grew greener on my side. I would classify this as Lesson 1 of becoming a Super Mom: Be grateful for everything you have and stop comparing! And as a subtopic, the comparing goes both ways - it is equally distracting and destructive to focus on other people's faults. Appreciate what YOU have (not someone else) and focus on improving YOURSELF (not someone else).

Dieter F. Uchtdorf said, "We have been given so much. We are surrounded by such an astonishing wealth of light and truth that I wonder if we truly appreciate what we have... Too often we let ourselves be distracted by the imperfections of our fellow members instead of following the example of our Master. We tread a path covered with diamonds, but we can scarcely distinguish them from ordinary pebbles."

When I stopped comparing, I was then able to look at my incredible mom friends and their perfect, well-behaved children and immaculate homes and stylish clothes and gorgeous hair and thriving gardens (this is a long list; I'd better stop before I embarrass myself), and simply be happy for them! It took some training, but I finally stopped meeting these observations with envy and replaced it with admiration. Of course, below that was the understanding that usually no one has it "all together" quite as much as the outward appearance would suggest, and that there are probably struggles and insecurities that no one can see. But motherhood is not a competition! I'd like to get my hands on whomever started us all off subconsciously thinking that. These amazing women are not here in my life to make me feel bad about myself because I don't measure up. On the contrary, they are here so I can observe what it is that makes them amazing and learn from them! Actually I'm kind of hoping that might work by osmosis, and just by hanging out with them often I might somehow magically become amazing too. I'll let you know how that works out for me.

In the meantime, I'm making a valiant effort to enjoy the diamonds.

This is an amazing, crazy, beautiful, scary, and fleeting time. Why ruin it by setting my sights on the other side of the field instead of on what's right in front of me? This is obviously easier said than done, but it's a work in progress. I'm off to collect some diamonds!