Making the Beautiful Out of the Imperfect

 I yearn for the beautiful, but life is messy.  Do you avoid blog reading because it makes you feel less-than-perfect?  I do sometimes.  It's no secret that I'm a Pinterest fan, but I can allow the tendrils of feeling overwhelmed and insufficient slip in as I scroll through the pages.

Today I want to encourage you.
The only perfection we should be striving for is Jesus. If we seek perfection in anything else, especially ourselves, we will be left as tattered flags on a battleground.
Beauty, not perfection, is an attainable goal.
I don't have it all together.
I hide in the pantry and eat chocolate.
My closet looks like a bomb detonated.
I would rather read a book than teach Algebra, and sometimes I do.

What if I looked beyond the messiness of me and saw the beauty in my days?
Attitude is transforming.
As I was loading the picture above, I had to giggle.  My fall gourd vignette topped off with a hair band on the white pumpkin.
Life being lived is so much better than still-life.

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We have our first big event at the farm this weekend.  Needless to say, we are tying up all the loose ends.  We never accomplish more than when we're about to have company.  Can you relate?  

One of the projects to complete is our well house.  It needed to be painted and my man only has so many hours of daylight left thanks to daylight savings time.  I really wanted to paint it for him, but the constant mind battle of I-should-be-focusing-on-homeschool began.  I decided to start early and get as much done as possible.  As I started on the second side, I looked up and saw this:

My sweet boy brought homeschool to me!  He climbed up on the well house and we worked on his writing assignment as I painted.
Beauty out of the imperfect.

My daughter decided to join us and as she sat down next to the pond to work on grammar, she noticed that we have some new neighbors.

True beauty.

Our neighbor across the pond added a pony to our view, too.

I sometimes fall into the "yes" pit.  I say yes to stuff and then wonder why I feel like my household is out of control.  I realized that I had been saying "yes" to too much tv.  Yesterday I declared that it was a tv free day.  "No tv?!"  At first my kids couldn't understand why I was being so "mean."  I even doubted my reasoning.
However, when I came in from painting the well house, I found my girls playing cards.
On their own.
Without mom's suggestion.
Getting along.
Enjoying each other.

Yes.  Beauty out of the imperfect.

I encourage you to look for the beauty in the messiness of today.
Seek and you will find.  ;)