A Month of "Somedays"

Warning. It's a long one. 

Dear all supermom bloggers, 
If you could please slow down and give me a chance to catch up, I'd appreciate it. I just need a minute to adopt a child, make a t-shirt scarf, distress a coffee table, sew some ruffle leggings for the girls, create a charity, buy a Canon or Nikon camera with installed editing software, and open an Etsy shop. 

Sincerely, 
The Newbie

I feel that way. When I'm reading hilarious blogs and looking through all those amazing DIY sites, my heart screams DO! NOW! But in my head there is a very real and present, saddening whisper. "Someday." 

At times it seems there are all these thing-clouds looming over my head, taunting me with the un-done and not-good-enough. I'm creative and crafty, and I have a pretty good eye for photos. I have canvas stacked up in my craft closet, and drawers full of acrylic paint. I have a Cricut on my wish list and about a dozen "to do someday" notes saved on my desktop. I have a little sewing table that houses an old olive green Singer that my mom picked up for me at a consignment sale a couple years ago. 

But it seems, no matter how many things I need or want to do, they're all hanging out in "someday." I haven't ever used my sewing machine. Not even once. It still has the scrap fabric that my mom used to make sure it worked sitting under its little silver foot, waiting patiently for "someday" to happen. 

I don't have inspirational quotes on my chalkboard-painted wall. I don't even have a chalkboard. I don't have any awesome Ikea art or furniture spunking up my crib. 

Much to my dismay, most of my walls are blank. Not because I hate art. On the contrary, I'm a bit of an art fanatic (post to follow). I just hate spending money on it. I am thoroughly convinced that I can paint anything I see, so I take pictures of the easy stuff (pieces that would take me less than an hour, because I don't have the time or patience at this point to do much more than that) when I'm at Target or World Market. I pin quotes and pictures and other "someday I will" crafts to my Pinterest. And then, my walls sit blank, and my "someday I will do that" settles in to my month of somedays. 

I look at all these amazing things that all these supermom or supertrendy DIY bloggers do and have and show... and, though I draw inspiration from these finds, I also find myself feeling ultra, ultra lame. 

Someday, my kitchen will have wooden letters spelling the word E A T down the wall. I will have a painting that lists our Kelly Family house rules. I will have my kids' silhouettes cut out and mod podged on painted wooden plaques, placed between vintage garage sale-found frames that I spray-painted red or turquoise to match some one of a kind red, turquoise, and mustard yellow throw pillows that I made myself (don't forget the round pillow made from felt rosettes... that will be there, too). Oh, and a sunburst clock or mirror.

Someday my blog will be littered with amazing photographs that I've taken of my kids and pets and sunrises with my fancy camera. 

Someday my toddlers will have a bookshelf full of serious homeschool curriculum that I imagined, created, and organized myself. 

Someday I will have really amazing organizing tools all over the place. Crates, spray painted and screwed to the wall, pallet furniture on my back patio, a sandbox made out of foam and plaster (ok, maybe not that). 

Someday every meal in my house will be colorful and healthy, and nothing in my house will contain preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, or artificial coloring (or carbs). 

Someday I will walk proudly into the health food mart with an arm full of canvas bags to purchase finely selected fruit and veggies so I can feed my kids their delicious and healthy green smoothies in the morning. 

Someday I will talk about my charity, and let you know how you can contribute if you feel compelled. 

Someday I will be at my book signing.

Someday, someday, someday.

I may sound trivial right now, but make no mistake. I am not trivializing any of these things. They are, quite seriously, on my "someday" list.


Alas, for now, I am a busy wife and mom. My days are spent cleaning up spilled pudding, playing bike taxi and leading trampoline cheer practice with the kids, looking at the floor and wondering how it got so gross when I mopped and vacuumed yesterday, taking crust off PB & Js, giving baths and changing diapers. My someday seems so far away. It seems I hardly have time for the things that I need to do on a daily basis (I swear I can't even find time to exercise - but I think I could probably fit it in if I tried hard enough). And it's defeating.

For now, my walls are bare. My kitchen walls are decorated with a splatter of spaghetti and curtains that are attached to the pull by a paper clip. My kids faces will go un-silhouetted, and I'll have hand-me-down pillows on my Craigslist sectional (with zipper, removable covers so I can toss them in the wash), and dreams of art and canvas and sunburst mirror-speckled walls. 

For now, my camera is on my Wal-Mart pay-by-month phone, and my pictures may or may not ever make it to print.

I will homeschool with whatever tools I've got (paper and pencil, unless the pencil needs sharpening), and even then, maybe only a day or two a week. My organization tools will be cut up cardboard boxes that I haven't even covered with cute paper and mod podge. 

My patio will be bare or host mismatched furniture without cushions, and I will shop produce at Wal-Mart and reach my car with a cart full of plastic bags (and a screaming toddler or two). 

My charity and adopted children will remain in my grand prayers and imaginings, and my book, well, hopefully that will be written (someday). 

My month of "somedays" holds all kinds of magical hopes and fantastic dreams, but the problem with SOMEDAY is that I tend to find myself overlooking TOday. 

I get so caught up in all the things that I might have the chance to do, that I sometimes ignore the magnificent blessings that are sitting right in front of me. I think that - because blogging and Pinterest and the internet have made all of this sharing of crafts and ideas and love and charities and giving and living so available - if I don't do or have these things, my family will suffer and I'll be that loser mom who doesn't even make homemade playdoh or footprint fossils or send out photo Christmas cards. 

Things were different when we were kids.

Pinterest did not tell my mom what she needed to make our house welcoming or adorable. Our photos were snapped with a camera, and the pictures were either captured on a roll that was then dropped off in an envelope for a week-long development period, or developed by my dad in the dark room at his office (man, those were cool. Red light, liquid, photos dripping into development, hung from clothespins on a wire). I think our family photo was the one taken for the church directory.

We had home-cooked meals from my mother's Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook, which was cluttered with at least a thousand typed (on a typewriter) recipes or magazine clippings shoved and taped in here and there. My favorite meal was potato, canned green bean, sauteed hot dog and celery casserole stuff that my mom invented and probably cost about thirty cents per serving, if that.

And I'm FINE. (Though that may be debatable.) My childhood was happy. My parents were happy. Our walls were covered with art or crosses received as gifts, we didn't have family craft nights or funky throw pillows, and yet, somehow, we had a beautiful and loving, fun and magical life and family.

I doubt my parents ever lived in someday. They lived in today. Which is what we're told to do in that big book of wisdom. Hebrews 13:5 says "Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you.” 

It also says, "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." (Psalm 118:24)

And "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you know not what a day might bring." (Proverbs 27:1)

Oh, and what about Jesus' direct instruction, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matthew 6: 34)

It seems that God is pretty intent on our NOT living in a month of somedays. He calls us to live for TOday. It is okay to hope, and to dream, and to pin one thousand and one ways to make a chandelier out of household objects on my Pinterest board. But it is NOT okay to live in a month of somedays or to covet the lives that others have made for themselves. 

TOday, I have to be grateful for THIS life. TOday, I have to realize that just because another mom can go, go, go, go, while maintaining a perfectly lipsticked smile and finding time to paint and distress a table, hit the gym, fill her house and closet with amazing Anthropologie finds and homemade ottomans, put her daughter's hair in a braid that looks like a dove, bake and ice a two-tier birthday cake and then blog about it all, that doesn't mean that THIS mom has to.

TOday, my kids are happy and healthy. They don't care about the walls, or that they don't have ruffles on their leggings or adorable headbands and pearls. 

TOday my son will pull a wicker laundry basket with a rope and tell me that it is his pet dog named Tomorrow City. 

TOday my husband really, really enjoyed his bean and cheese burrito on a non-homemade tortilla. 

TOday I may or may not paint a flowerpot. 

TOday my house is semi-clean, and my walls are mostly bare. 

And TOday, that is okay. 

Here's to my effort to avoid stifling my talents and my writing and my blogging, because I'm afraid of not being able to keep up with the blogging supermoms who have super busy and productive lives. Here's to realizing that their lives are no more busy or productive than mine. (Except Jen Hatmaker. Hers is probably both busier, and more productive. But I really like her, so I'm okay with that.) 

We're all just in it to get by, be happy, make some sort of impact on somebody (hopefully a good impact on our children and friends, mostly), and get to Heaven.

Here's to embracing my ordinary, silly, bare, messy, hopeful life, without worrying about if and when I'll ever accomplish all of those things that, in the big picture either don't matter at all, or will be provided in God's time. 

Here's to trimming down my month of somedays and pulling away from the idea that I have to do and make and have and be all of these things that may or may not ever be. And here's to learning to appreciate all the grand and not-so-grand things that I have done, and will do, TOday. 

Cheerio. :) 

Jessica



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