Hey There Mom Don’t Judge Me…

tmp_5141-20160620_093240-1209687095I am not perfect. I possess flaws, I have fears, I get angry and it is hard for me to trust others.

It is amazing how things in our past affect us. How experiences as children shape and mold us as adults. Many of us are truly products of our environments but many of us are also determined NOT to be products of our environment.

Somehow I became a passenger on this journey to NOT be a product of past environments and in doing this I set out to be a certain type of parent. I decided I wanted to be present for my children in ways that I felt were missed in the past. I sought out to create a certain environment for my children on purpose. This does not make me a perfect parent, it makes me flawed.

Flawed because I obviously still carry certain pain and hurt around. Flawed because I decided to try and build a life contrary to that pain. I am flawed.

Realizing I am flawed allows me to notice and accept that I am not the only parent with flaws. Everyone is flawed in some way. While this is comforting in a small sense, it is no conciliation because if we look around, our society operates and has us operating in a cloud of perfection. We must be perfect parents, our children must be perfect students, perfect athletes, et cetera and so on.

We, flawed human beings demand and expect perfection. Does this come from our own experiences of disappointments?

I have been told my expectations are too high. To some this is a sure way of being disappointed. For me, I just believe in having a standard. Experiencing certain disappointments early in life made me want more. More for my children, more for myself. I don’t mean more things. I mean more from people.

The things I am talking about are more loyalty, more support, more kindness, more love, more help, more understanding and more compassion.

Of course in order to expect these things I must be a giver of such things; and being that I am also a flawed human being and parent and due to the lack of receiving much of the above mentioned things, I take them really seriously… too seriously in fact.

Now I must remember Grace. To grant grace.. and grace and more grace as difficult as it is. I must teach my kids Grace but also teach them to have standards and that both can somehow co-exist.

I am flawed, I am not responsible for how I look through someone else’s eyes, but I know I am flawed and I also have standards. My standards are guidelines, and Grace is the reality that we (including myself) get it wrong sometimes. We mess up! We drop the ball and sometimes we just give up.

Perfection for anyone or anything is not realistic but striving for it is a challenge that many of us take on, despite the inevitable.

Some people are treated harshly due to their appearance. Some can tell a person of their personal struggles and it won’t mean much. It has to due with perception. How we perceive someone can hinder or determine how we treat them.

I keep a clean house, partly because of how I was raised, partly because I clean when I am stressed. This is a good AND bad thing. No I do not have OCD but that is how I learned to cope with stress. Don’t judge me. I could go on. The point is our flaws are what makes us who we are and we cannot be afraid for our flaws to be seen. Interestingly, some things we consider flaws others consider to be attributes. It’s that dog on perception thing again.

We, us..you and me.. are flawed human beings and flawed parents and it is OK. Please don’t judge me. “Don’t judge me” is something we say to each other, sometimes in jest. I’ll try not to judge you. May Grace abound and may you also keep your standards around.