Granting myself Grace...

As a mother, we often have to give our children the room to fail. To have a shortcoming and be ok with not being perfect at everything. As a Christian, I call it granting grace to my children. I do it when they can't clean up messes by themselves, or when they need extra help with something. But, we rarely extend this grace to ourselves.

I am not a housewife at heart. Cleaning and meal plans are not second nature to me. I often beat myself up about thid. I SHOULD keep a tidy house effortlessly, and be able to whip up a month worth of yummy freezer foods in 30 minutes and bake bread from scratch twice daily. I mean, any good housewife can, right?

But the thing I am the worst at? Clothes management. I don't save clothes for the younger kids as the older ones outgrow them. I am saving a few things for Reese since she is so close in size to Anna-Lee now, but as a rule I don't save clothes by size and season. We just buy clothes from the thrift store and sales and consignment places as needed. I spend around $2-400 a year on clothes for all 5 of us. Hubby and I of course keep clothes since we don't have growth spurts to worry about!

I've decided to grant myself some grace in this area. Its ok to not save and store every article of clothes in case we can use it again down the road. By donating it, I'm passing it on to another thrifty mama for her little ones. I'm letting myself stay sane, save space (we have no room to store totes of clothes even if I were so inclined), and I remind myself that its ok to not be perfect. Now, I've got 30 minutes and 25 meals to cook if you'll excuse me.

Where can you stand to give yourself a little grace? Maybe you beat yourself up about sleep issues with your baby. Its ok to have a crappy sleeper. Eventually they outgrow it, or are old enough that a doctor will listen and help. Maybe your body doesn't want to let go of those last few pregnancy pounds...curves are HOT! Be gentle with yourselves, and extend the grace we as mothers give to everyone else to yourself once in a while. You'll be glad you did.