Every child shines in their own way…

I was in my kitchen tonight, glancing at the pictures of both my girls that I have pinned up from over the years..

As I start writing this, I feel like I could write a book on this subject alone, but will do my best to keep it local to my two girls…

Children compare. Siblings compare… People compare… it’s a bit of an evil in life, but it’s true!! We ALL do it.

As my girls grew, I knew they were different from day one…like POLAR OPPOSITES different. I knew this because this was me and my sister. She was cerebral…she could read a book and recite its contents. I could read a book and get stuck on page one til the end of time… I TOTALLY didn’t get her and I didn’t understand her skills… by comparison, I fell short (or at least I felt that at the time for many years).

Raising my own two girls (who are LITERALLY me and my sister on SO many levels) has been the biggest trip of my life. There have been SO many times I felt like I was having Deja Vu with all the stuff they went through.

The biggest component in it all was comparison…

I wish we as a people could do away with looking at what everyone else has, does, is… It’s literally the death of our potential (and don’t get me started on the word Potential, because that is another post on its own).

Both of my girls had their gifts (and their achilles heel). We ALL do… But the problem when you are raising children is there is this triangle that happens and it’s each unit against the mom.

Facebook being what it is, I have posted …well..pretty much EVERYTHING about my children. The issue with posting everything is simply that you invite every last opinion warranted, requested or not, into your life. Basically, it opens you up to criticism.

Because I am the way I am, I have opened myself up to this and have accepted the consequences. I’m not perfect and never profess to be. In all honesty, I think my writings have proven the fact that I am completely IMperfect on the daily. But I do my best and for that I have been given much grace by many.

That said, as I was looking over the pictures on my fridge, I paused a bit tonight. I glanced at every picture and realized how each of my girls have found their place to shine. And each of my girls have acquired their accolades for their efforts. The sad thing is…at this time of writing, I don’t think EITHER realizes what they have accomplished. And I’m not sure that I could completely articulate it, but I’m certainly happy to try.

Growing up myself as one of five VERY different children, I see where life can go off track. We come into this world with nothing, and we grow and learn by what we are exposed to. Where life goes off track is where we try to emulate what we see in another, thinking this should be our path in life…and we fall way short…

As it was with my cerebral sister (that I acquired no where near her gift) I felt I sucked as a human being. As she got A’s and B’s in school, I was lucky to get a C for all my efforts but in all honesty, lack of desire.

It is this life experience that I can see my own two girls and realize how one might feel lacking to the other.

We ALL come into this world with gifts in our lives. We are not all the same, and what a boring world it would be if we were. We are different for a reason…and my favorite analogy is the dinner table.

Imagine a table where we are all salt. I laugh writing this. A dinner table would NEVER be all salt. And as I live with a total foodie and self appointed short order cook to a vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian and meat eater…our table is full of so many offerings, we could feed whomever comes through our door.

My girls have their offerings that would be fit for a feast.

I actually thought of breaking down their gifts, but the truth is, if they read it, they would still find shortcomings in theirselves. We all would. My point is made in the offerings we bring to each other in this world.

I feel sad for anyone who longs for perfection. I don’t believe perfection is found in any one person or being. But we all DO have something unique to offer that we should come to love about ourselves.

So though I had no idea where this post was going, I do think its clear in my message… in this world of people, you bring something to the table. You could be salt…you could be gravy. You COULD be the soap that washes the dishes…but you bring SOMETHING… Don’t discount who you are or what you have to offer. And don’t let anyone discount who you are or what you have to offer. You ARE something and you ARE special… don’t forget that!!! (posting without proofing because I’m not perfect).