Whose Standards Are You Trying to Meet?

I know when I first became a wife and mother I was completely lost. I had no practice minus some babysitting and being a nanny. I was not a great cook or responsible with money. The one thing I had going for me was that I had a lot of excitement and passion and a willingness to grow and learn. Boy did I try to learn. I bought almost every book on being a great Christian woman, wife, mom, homemaker, and homeschooler. I browsed blogs and Internet sites in hopes of learning all the tricks to doing this just "perfect."

I found so much information, some really good, some really strange (IMO), and some very useless. I had information overload. I would see a woman's blog or read a book and think,

"I've got to be just like her (or what that book says)."

The thing was I wasn't that woman or the woman that book described. I was Ashley.

I remember one book in particular saying, "Every wife should wear a house dress and apron and fix their hair and makeup and look beautiful and smell great when their husband gets home." Not that I am opposed to dresses (I try to wear one to church on Sundays) or looking nice (I do that on Sundays and date nights LOL). I just don't have that desire to wake up and spend hours plucking, blow drying, curling, straightening, applying makeup, and picking out perfect dresses to wear each day. I also don't wear aprons that much (probably because I don't worry about getting my sweat clothes dirty).

I also remember thinking, "I have to make perfect elaborate meals everyday and keep a perfectly immaculate home all the time." The funny thing is my husband could care less about a 5 course dinner (he would only eat 2 of them). He's a meat and potatoes and dessert kind of guy. If I served a salad and/or soup course, he would say, "Where's the real food?" LOL! I figured out that a simply prepared meal with decently healthy ingredients was good enough. It took me a few years, but after awhile I created a list of tried-and-true recipes that suited all of our tastes, my time constraints, and our budget. As far as an immaculate home goes, once you have a couple of kids, you can forget about that. LOL! I have to have things organized because I am that way so I do like to have a place for everything and eventually have things go back to that place, but having a picture-perfect home just isn't going to happen.

I say all of this to say, "Whose standards are you trying to meet?" Are you trying to be like June Cleaver or Martha Stewart or that lady at church who "seems to" have it all together? Are you trying to be perfect? Are you trying to be someone you are not? Then,

STOP!!!!

Stop before you drive yourself and everyone else around you crazy. Looking to be like someone else will only lead to disappointment. You have your life, your spouse, your kids (or no kids), and your circumstances. Do what works for you. Be the person God created you to be and don't compare yourself to others.