I am not good at baking.
Working with numbers makes my head spin. That’s why if you ever take a class of mine, the maximum points you can earn in a semester is 1000 because it makes calculating grades really simple.
I am wholly incapable of getting my entire family out of the house in matching socks. Magoo’s will match because her uniform requires it, but ordinarily the rest of us will be wearing ridiculously mismatched socks.
I can’t keep the inside of my car clean.
These are things I know about myself. Knowing these things makes life easier. They allow me to work within the confines of my abilities and focus my time on areas I can make a difference in.
I haven’t been feeling well over the past couple of days, so I was lying on the couch watching Mae crawl all over the place. She kept pulling herself up and cruising around. Then she would fall. And she would get back up and try again. Sometimes she would make it on the first try, and sometimes it would take a few. But eventually she would get there.
And it made me think. What if she saw how many times she fell down trying to stand and came to the conclusion that she’s a crawler? She’s just not good at this whole walking thing. Might as well focus on the areas she’s good at… like crawling?
We have many more years of trial and error than babies do. But still… what if what we are bad at is determined more by our perceptions than by reality?
What if we could be a master chef or a marathoner or a published author or a happy person? What if we have just have let the falls determine our fate?
Elsewhere on the web…
Have you checked out my Facebook page?
Becky at Raising Loveliness has published an e-book containing interviews with bloggers about nurturing joy in their families, and she was gracious enough to ask me to be a part of it. If you would like your free copy, head on over to her site http://www.raisingloveliness.com/nurturing-joy/
And here are some of my recent posts on Mothering.com
Why They Will Always Be Our Babies