You know how on bad days you'll seem to notice only the good stuff happening to others? Everyone's lives seem so orderly/happy/perfect almost exactly as yours is chaotic and falling apart at the seams. And so you find yourself wishing you had someone else's life... Surely their baby always naps, their dishes are always clean, their work is always done before midnight and their hair is always clean and done. After all their IG feed/blog/twitter seems to make it look like it is... And so we pine for someone else's life... If only I...
And then as life would have it the messes get cleaned up, babies start sleeping again, you are possessed by some Pinterest gods to bake something chocolately and ultra luxurious, perhaps you buy a new shirt and oh lets say the temperatures hover dangerously above 70 degrees... dare I say verging on 80??? And that chocolately goodness goes right to your IG feed and that new shirt looks so lovely with all that warm sunshine... And... I think you see where I'm going here.
When we pine for someone else's "good" life when ours is bad we neglect to realize that just like every other normal, functioning, alive human they have bad days too. They may not look like your bad days but they're bad days nonetheless. For heaven's sake we may not even be able to handle someone else's bad days as our own tend to be uniquely ours.
And so as I was washing what seemed like the fiftieth sink full of dishes that day, exhausted, a dull headache settling into my frontal lobes I realized that today may suck but it's my suckiness and I'm gonna keep it. Because when the dust settles it will be my darling husband whose arms I crawl into at night and my baby's smile I'll wake up to in the morning and my clean house I'm just going to love. And even though someone else's life may seem like daisies now I don't want their good because I know I'd get their bad too. After all the Bible wisely said "He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty." (Matthew 5:45) I know I couldn't possibly handle more than one child right now, I couldn't handle living anywhere but here in the country, I couldn't handle a different job, age, etc...
And so next time I have a wearisome day I'll remember that it's temporary and it's mine. And maybe go bake some cookies because being knee deep in batter is my idea of a "spa day."