Have you ever visited a blog and thought to yourself, “Wow. Her house is always so perfectly clean!” or “She is such an amazing seamstress/DIYer, she never makes any mistakes!” or “Holy cow, her food always looks amaaaayyyzing!” Yeah, me too.
I’ll admit, sometimes that makes me annoyed. Because you know that can’t all be real. Of course they’ve had sewing fails. Obviously their living room gets messy and dusty. I’ll bet the first time they tried to dye fabric something probably went wrong. You know that the first time they ever sewed a pair of pants, they probably used their seam ripper just as much as their sewing machine.
Ever since I started my blog a few years ago, I knew I didn’t want to be – couldn’t be – that kind of blogger. I’d share my successes, but also my failures or my “almost quite rights, but not exactly perfects.”
And on Instagram? I share my messy living room … so you can follow me and feel so much better about your housekeeping skills.
If we only share things that are perfectly styled, perfectly cropped, or perfectly sewn, how does that encourage someone who is just learning? How does that give us an opportunity to form authentic relationships, based on real-life?
I value growth. I value authenticity. I value being real with the people around me. I value sharing the good and the bad [and sometimes the ugly…] in life and in the things that I make. I value knowing that I have the freedom to make mistakes alongside my successes.
Will I share a lot of the pretty things? Yes, of course. I probably wouldn’t have all you lovely readers if I never showed you my occasional awesome. ;)
But am I a work in progress? Obviously. Aren’t we all? I have yet to meet someone who is really, truly perfect at everything they do and never makes mistakes. There is no perfect parent, seamstress, chef, housekeeper, fill-in-your-chosen-skill-here… God gifted me with my own strengths that are different from yours. If I look at your blog and compare myself to you [or vice versa], how is that helpful? If I never try anything new and risk making mistakes, what fun is that?
So when you visit this space, you can be sure that I’m going to share things that I’m proud of – even if they’re not always perfect. Sometimes you might look at something I’ve created and think I have a lot to learn – you’re probably right. I do. And other times you’ll visit, be inspired, and leave having a new skill in your repertoire.
But whichever it is, you’ll leave knowing that you’ve seen the real me – the imperfect, growing, always-learning, grace-filled me. If we all shared our rough edges, our work-in-progress selves, I think our relationships would all be a little bit deeper and we’d all feel better admitting that we don’t really have it all together.