Holy Housewives—Passionate Housewives Desperate for God Chapter 5—Freedom from the bondage of Perfectionism…

Welcome back to Holy Housewives.  Join Multitasking Mom and I as we discuss our lives being at home.

I don’t know one stay at home mom, who has not struggled with this.  I am so guilty of this it isn’t even funny.  Honestly, I still struggle with it.  I have struggled to the point that it nearly threw me into deep depression.  I have struggled with the fact that I am never good enough for anyone.  Yep, from childhood, I have honestly never felt good enough for someone to love.  This has only been pushed more as I have become an adult and have the you aren’t educated enough to be able to make a solid opinion on __________.  (insert politics, immunizations, homeschool, family size, husband, home business, or just about anything else that has come up)  I didn’t get a complete college degree, but I did attend 64 hrs of college classes.  I don’t hold any certificates or diplomas, outside of highschool.  However, I hold six birth certificates, and I have God, who is the most important “person”I could have to love me.  You know what?  He does love me, He loves you and He loves your children.  He loves us all!  He is the one who created us.  There is nothing that we do that surprises him. 

First, we MUST toss away the idea that we can meet or even go beyond the worldly expectations that are thrown at us.  The only expectations we need to be concerned with are Gods.  As a mother of a large family, who homeschools, there are some stereotypes that are thrown at us.  People automatically tend to expect us to be a few things or assume we do some or all of the following:

perfectly polished, wear skirts all the time, wear a head covering, never raise our voice, our children will always behave at home and away from home, our laundry is always caught up, our meals are perfect, always homecooked from scratch and beyond healthy, we accomplish everything on our to do list, we have lots of spare time to take on volunteer projects, we have perfect gardens and put up exuberant amounts of produce, our children never get sick, we either have plenty of money or none, we don’t use doctors, we sew all our own clothes, our husbands jeans never have holes, our homes could be on the cover of Better Homes and gardens, we are patient, our children are always in cloth diapers, our babies sleep through the night early on, and so many more. 

See how a person could drive themselves crazy?  I mean could anyone really accomplish this?  No, not me.  In fact my eighteen month old has only slept through the night twice, my husband and oldest have more jeans with holes then without, my house could make the cover of the messiest home, I rarely have time nor energy to volunteer, my children see a wonderful pediatrician-and in the past, have been sick often, you can find me raising my voice to be heard over the daily chatter, we have been on both sides of the money, I try to cook healthy, homecooked meals, but don’t always succeed.  I love my jeans, and my long blonde hair is my head covering.  I like my ta da list more then my to do list, I just threw out tomatoes that rotted while I was presserving green beans, I have very little patience.

See, if I truly tried to live up to the perfectionist of the homemaker ideal, I would fall into such a deep depression and lose sight of what God’s plan really are for me.  We must follow God’s paths for our lives.  We must keep a realistic ideal of what we are able to do.  We must not hold our expectations of others so high that we push them.  There are several homes, I look at, with large homeschooling families, and think, how do they keep it so together?  However, we are only peeping into their lives through a tiny hole. 

Do you struggle with perfectionism?  What are your thoughts on this chapter?

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