A Thankfully Imperfect Woman’s Epiphany Moment

As I sit here writing my first blog, I am eating a piece of my daughter’s twelfth birthday cake and having a cup of Vanilla Cream decaf coffee, and it’s 6:07 a.m.Yes, I am a thankfully imperfect woman.  I am a part of the middle class. A family raising, comic strip living, ever-grateful, Christian woman who’s main goal in life is to find something wonderful in every single day.

I have an incredible husband who I credit as my gift from God, I have three girls who are all growing up faster than their Momma would like (and who I’m very proud of), and I have my life…such as it is with my version of health issues.  I’ve had my version of hard knocks in life, I’ve lived the “I have to be perfect for everyone” life, and I’m here living in the NOW for me and my family.

I am one of the fortunate women who can work part-time while my husband works full-time.  This actually came not out of a sense of want, but need.  You see I can be a workaholic.  I LOVE to work, I love having extra money that I can use to splurge on extra goodies for my house, my closet, my kids, my friends, or to give away!  Unfortunately my health had other plans.  So I cut back…on work and on spending (the latter not as easily).

I love home decorating on a budget, babies, fashion, thrifting, vintage finds, my home, real work, gardening, and playing.

The home decorating on a budget is one of the things I look forward to blogging about.  I’ve been reading a few blogs lately, admiring the gorgeous pictures of these women’s homes and I thoroughly admire what they’ve done with them.  They’re truly gorgeous!

But in my real world, there’s dirty handprints on door jambs, my walls crack in the winter because our house is built on ledge rock and it shifts, and my house is never perfectly clean.  Picked up, yes.  Lived in, yes.  Perfectly clean, no.  Yes, I have to admit that before I take the picture for the story below, I will clean up my bathroom…I’m not that imperfect after all.

I only wish I had a before picture – just imagine a bathroom half the size where one person barely fit in to do all, and I mean all their business.  Then realize we have three girls.  I told my husband we were going to have to expand into the next room, there really was no choice.  With four women in the house it was going to need to be a community space where we could all get ready in the morning.

I have no doubt this was my husband’s epiphany moment.  To this day he gets up at 5 a.m. to do his daily biking, showering and is out of the house before the rest of us show our faces.  Yes, I married a smart man.

Back to the projects…my husband and I have done all the work in the house with the exception of a few small projects here and there that are beyond our limited expertise.  And our limited expertise shows!

This is where the real test came for this perfection crazed woman…it was in that moment of redoing/expanding our incredibly small bathroom into a very large one that the epiphany hit me.

My husband had just installed the new toilet paper holder and said “What do you think?”  I looked at it and said in a gruff yet shrill tone:  “It’s crooked!!!”

PAUSE for full effect.

Picture husband’s pinched face.

Wife of the year award goes to….Patty O!

Before this moment I hadn’t realized just how anal retentive I had become.  Here was this wonderful husband who had worked so hard to make an incredible bathroom for all us girls and I was upset about a (slightly) crooked toilet paper holder.  Hmmmm…

This was my moment of grasping imperfection and realizing it was meant to be.  After all, how boring would our lives be if everything was perfect?

This story happened 10 years ago.  Oh, and yes…there was a witness – my oldest daughter!  The three of us now laugh and shake our heads when we picture the scene of that day!

Today I relish in all the imperfect moments we’ve had (and continue to have) in our lives – they are not only truly eye-opening, learning moments – but also some of the most fun!

May this day bring you an imperfect moment or two that you can laugh at, appreciate and grow in…I’m sure ours will!

God Bless…

Your friend,

Patty O