Just now I looked to see how my pages I “liked” on Facebook. I follow 396 pages. I’m actually embarrassed to admit that. That’s a lot of pages. Most of those pages are blog fan pages, and most of those blog fan pages are from the blogs of my friends.
I’m on Facebook a lot. Mainly because that is where the writing/blogging groups I’m in “meet” – they meet on Facebook. I actually read more blog posts from Facebook pages than I read from the blog site itself. Yes, I’m slightly addicted.
I love blogging and even more so writing. I love my blog friends. I love reading their posts. I love their ministries and businesses. They are really, really good at what they do, and they are doing a great job. They are providing for their families. They are raising up young moms through their instruction. They are helping marriages thrive.
But I’ve noticed a trend with bloggers – you may call them mommy bloggers because they mostly write on motherhood, homemaking, and marriage – and this is it: As a reader, I’m being dropped off at the ideal without being taken through the grace.
Are mommy bloggers contributing to a homemaker culture of perfectionism?
The other day I painted my toenails for the first time since my baby was born – seven months ago. Not ten minutes later I was on Facebook and the question popped up, “Do you use toxin-free nail polish to paint your nails?” It was followed by a question on a separate blog fan page – “Do you use a dishwasher or wash your dishes by hand?”
Quite possibly it’s my own insecurity, but when I see a post about toxins in fingernail polish or asking whether I use a dishwasher, I want to throw my hands in the air and scream, “I give up! I’ll never be good enough!”
I think of the single woman who’s raising her children on her own or the woman who wants to be a full-time homemaker but her husband doesn’t agree or the one who’s single and just wants to be married. How are they feeling? Do they feel like they can’t measure up in this seemingly perfect homemaker culture?
I also wonder if there’s a back-story. Actually, I know there’s a back-story. I’ve lived long enough now to know that everyone, and I mean everyone, has a back-story because we’re all just that fallen. So what is it? What’s the back-story? I’m exposed to the ideal, but where is the grace?
I want to know about the grace.
The grace-filled story is where the power of Jesus lives. The power that changes perception and gives us truth – that only through Him are we ever enough.
I want to read about the woman who can’t afford toxin-free nail polish and doesn’t have time to wash dishes by hand – along with how to do these things. That’s what I want.
We write about how Pinterest and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram are all making us crazy with comparison and this perfect picture and how we feel like we won’t ever measure up. But are we as bloggers contributing to the problem?
And I could be just as much to blame. I don’t know what people think when they see a Facebook update from my blog fan page. But I hope they don’t perfection because perfection isn’t here. Perfection is no where near this broken-soul of a woman who each day realizes more and more and more and more that she is completely nothing without the Cross. Each day my life depends more than the previous on Jesus’s grace.
Grace to get up out of the bed in the morning after being up with my baby a few times during the night. Grace for when my husband’s pants for work aren’t washed by the time he needs them – again. Grace for ordering take out three nights in a week. Grace for the professional baby pictures we spent tons of money on that still aren’t hanging on the wall. Grace for not reading to my baby for the fourth day in a row when I’m the reading teacher – I know better!
In my world, it’s nothing but grace. So I want more of the grace – the real, the messy, the mistakes, the out-of-control, the humanness – along with the picture-perfect.
I want more of Jesus.
