You know all of those people on Facebook with the perfect lives? The picture perfect house, the made up face and well coiffed hair, the angelic children…c’mon, you know those people. In fact, maybe you are one of those people. Maybe I am too. Well, you know, on Facebook. Well, except for the made up face and well coiffed hair. While I do try to post things that are honest, true to who I am, and true to who my family is… sometimes Facebook only gets life through a filter. A really good one. And we’ve all ready the post circulating the ‘Book Land, about how we shouldn’t do that for the sake of every one else who is comparing their lives to yours. Well….
There are two sides of this coin. One side can be almost a deception, where we do it to purposely make other people think we have our ducks in a row. Or because we’re trying to hide whatever major life struggle we’re going through at that moment. The flip side of that is that we can post “the best” and have it be what we strive for, or a reminder of how things can be. On days when I find myself trying to hide my struggle, I also look at those snippets of life, that one moment when I thought, Good grief am I thankful for these beautiful, sweet children! I cannot believe how blessed my life is! Even if that moment was followed by a meltdown or yelling or any of the things that follow when sweet moments unravel into tears. But I can go back, and look at that photo and remember why I posted that picture that made it look like my kids are beautiful, perfect angels.
Life is beautiful, but it’s also messy and complicated, and hard and sad. And I like to document those moments too, and *gasp* even post them on Facebook. In the last year we’ve moved, we’ve had dear friends move, we’ve had family go their separate ways, we’ve realized we have two boys who are ASD/SPD and are now trudging through the unfamiliar waters of making sure they get the help they need and learning just what that means. None of these things are life ending, but they have been life altering. There are days when I get out of my pajamas just in time for my husband to come home from work. Or when the puppy has chewed through my internet cord again, even though I’ve already had to replace it twice. (It seems New Puppy would prefer I not have internet access.) I like to keep things honest, so there are words and photos that show the harder side of life, but just like I choose to look at life in a glass half full kind of way, I tend to do my Facebook posts in the same manner.
If we focus on the hard, everything seems hard. I’ve chosen to post things that serve to give me reminders to why I chose this life. Why I choose this life over and over again. Because there is always times when I look at my life and my family and think, “This is perfect.” So that when I have moments of imperfection, I can just pull up that picture where they’re studiously doing their school work and my kitchen was clean. It helps me handle the times when school work takes fooorrreeever and there’s a mountain of dirty dishes. There are always going to be people who put on a show and only post the good side and act like there isn’t a hard side. There’s people in real life that do the same thing, it’s really not that different. So while I readily admit that there is a hard side, I have chosen to not let it be my focus.
I know full well it is so easy for admiring the perfect world of anyone else to turn into a jealousy, or even self contempt. I know that there are humans out there that are boastful and disingenuous, who seem to aspire to deceive us about what their life is really like. It’s a slippery slope to let someone else’s photos and life make us feel less than worthy. But it turns out, I am in charge of my own self. I am an imperfect parent. I am an imperfect wife. I am an imperfect person. But I am also a person who tries very hard to give the best of myself to my family, my friends, my clients, and even humans in general. And part of doing that is reminding myself of why I work hard at (some days I work very, very hard) putting my best self forward. Comparing my life with anyone else does me no favors. And I’ve learned where the unfollow button is. I’m going to be honest here, I am going to continue posting things with my filter on.
laborofwonder 
Happy to see a post from you. This post speaks truth. ❤️