The Myth of the Rainbow Fruit Kebabs

For whatever reason, I volunteered to bring the "healthy snack" for my daughter's first grade class today, the day after Halloween.

The day after my family was throwing a Halloween block party for our neighborhood, reaching out again to let people know of our church plant.

The morning after I spent the past 48 hours dicing cooked hamburger patties, preparing 5 pots of chili, several gallons of lemonade, attended a preschool party for my 3 littles, decided to make myself a Halloween shirt, dressed my kids in costumes 3 times, walked my hilly neighborhood trick or treating with my four children, all while six months pregnant.

But look at them, aren't they cute? These and little mini pumpkin muffins were the perfect fall healthy snack, right?


If I would have posted just this picture on social media sites, all while a picture of my little maternity skeleton DIY shirt floated around (it was fun to wear that) and the news of the block party...or if this blog post ended now...what would you be tempted to think?

"Oh, I saw that on Pinterest!"
"Those are fun!"
"Man, how does she do it?"
"Where does she find the time or energy?"
"I can't believe she did that with 4 kids!"
"I wish I could do all that."
"Supermom."
"Ugh. I kinda hate her."

Okay. So let's get real.

I am a fool for volunteering to bring snack today. Just a little too much going on, ya know? I am exhausted. Like please do not make me sit down on the floor and play with my kids or read books because my back hurts too much exhausted. Yes the kebabs are cute but we ordered pizza for dinner and I actually didn't feed my littles lunch today because they ate donuts for breakfast at a friend's house and then I opened a carton of strawberries while they watched Veggie Tales while I closed my eyes during Josiah's nap. I was kind of a stressed mess during the block party because there were so many people and not enough help and my kids were just begging to go trick or treating but I couldn't leave my husband to do all the serving himself. I really got tired of them asking if they could have more candy because I knew it would just make them beasts later on. I was losing my patience with Josiah because his 3 year old selective hearing and clumsiness was just about to do this tired mama in. I was feeling discouraged that we were serving all these people chili and lemonade and cotton candy and the best candy and would they even come to bible study? Will our work and pouring out in every sense of the word ever come to fruition? And the rainbow kebabs were cute but then I felt bad when the teacher told me she had to reprimand kids for using the skewers as swords (what I was afraid of but it was easier than prepacking little cups of fruit and providing silverware).

When someone posts a cute Pinterest-y thing with their kids' latest craft or their clean house or their kids eating vegetables, where does it take you? To jealousy? To discontentment? To self-depracation? Does it make you want to pat her on the back as you realize she has different strengths and this whole mom thing is not a competition?

Because honestly, we all have some area of rainbow fruit kebabs. Something cutesy and fun and we put our best foot out there hoping someone will pat us on the back and tell us how awesome we are. Because so often we need someone else to tell us that because we don't do a good job of giving our own spirits an "atta girl." We forget that these little people were entrusted to us, that my children were entrusted to ME of all people, on purpose. God chose them for my offspring before the creation of the world. Yeah, I'm gonna botch it up. I'm going to lose my patience and have a messy house and say the wrong thing and cry in my bathroom. And yeah, I'm gonna post a picture of rainbow fruit kebabs and wait for people to tell me how cute they are so I can feel good again when really the hole in my heart needs to be filled by my Savior.

But in those moments of desiring to post the rainbow fruit kebabs, I strive to remember that there might be someone out there who sees the picture and it says more to her than "Oh, those are fun!" It might make her feel less than. Social media allows us to reveal our lives in snapshots of our choice. My life is not all rainbow fruit kebabs. Or happy well-behaved children. Or the beauty of former orphans being in a family. Yes, it is that. But it is also me yelling more often than I would like and declining to read that book right this minute and a sink full of dirty dishes and three baskets of laundry that haven't been folded in week, but now laundry day has come again. I do not want the pretty little highlights to remotely separate others from glimpsing the grace that God has spoken into my life on a daily basis. On the ways that I mess up and He draws me back to Himself each and every day. I don't want to push other people away because it appears like I have it all together. I'm an all-out mess. Ask those closest to me. I want to not be afraid to keep that mess [relatively] unhidden so I can freely admit I do not, in fact, have it all together. But I am a daughter of the One who holds the world in His very hands.

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