Don’t you sometimes find yourself dissatisfied with some area of your life?
I definitely do!
The lead couple kissing in the driveway before leaving for work, in the movie you watched last night plays clearly in your memory while you’re carrying out the garbage in your PJ’s, seething over an argument you’ve just had with your spouse about dog food. SERIOUSLY?! Get a room, you mutter.
I’m a lousy wife, says the voice in my mind. Sigh.
The picture perfect family on that billboard over the highway smile down at you from a sunlit beach, while you drive home in traffic with two hungry, irritable children and no glimpse of a holiday in the foreseeable future. Your heart takes a dip – every good family goes on holiday. My kids are being deprived, I’m a bad mommy. Sigh.
From then on, for a week, every advert showing holidays has you gritting your teeth in frustration and misery. The joyful attitude of the last two years’ mutual decision to save instead of going away seems like some distant craziness. I.WANT.A.HOLIDAY! (and I feel darn lousy for not being able to be that perfect family) is what’s really chewing at me.
Intro snappy wife and mum.
What is it that makes us get into thinking like that? What is it that makes us feel utterly miserable and dissatisfied about certain parts of our lives or ourselves? Where do we get our picture of what it means to be a beautiful woman, have an awesome marriage, and a beautiful home?
Have you ever stopped to dig deep and ask yourself?
I have to laugh at myself as this is an example of my train of thought sometimes:
I’ll wake up in the morning on a, say, Tuesday, subconsciously mulling over that fashion mag I read yesterday in the dentist waiting room, and open my shoe cupboard. (well, more like..my shoe microcollection of 5 pairs). Slops, slops, boots, brown heels, black heels. I’m a 30 year old attractive wife, no slops for me anymore. I can look as great as that model.. Heels it is! I whip out the sexiest pair, dust them off, and put them on, feeling instantly sexier for having them on. A flash of fashion mag model streaks through my head. Hot shoes..check. Great wife… double check.. and off I head to a normal morning of two toddlers, housework and general chaos. Sitting on the loo five hours later, I look down at my aching feet and wonder who the heck I’m kidding. Heels and my stay at home mom lifestyle don’t seem to gel as easily as expected.
Back they go in the shoe cupboard, and are replaced by the old trusty slops. Joy 
. They may not be hot, but they are comfy, I tell myself, feeling unsexy again. Some days I just want to feel more exciting and more important than just a ‘comfy’ wife. I want my norm to be that hot magazine model. I mean, isn’t that the norm? Can I not just step out of bed and into hotness? Every magazine I seem to read lately says so in picture form, or so I believe.
My realisation is that if we’re yoyoing with our emotions and pictures of ourselves, we are getting our skewed pictures from media, a lousy liar of a place.
4 Ways to Get Over that media Malarkey
1. Scrutinize what you see and watch
When Jennifer Aniston wakes up in that movie with perfect bed hair, and that stab of ”oh my word, she is beautiful and I wish I woke up like that, I must be wierd’ runs through your mind subconsciously, STOP right there, look at her and go ‘Really? Do people REALLY wake up like that? Nope, they take half and hour to GET like that. I’m normal, she’s misrepresenting, darn woman!.. move on.’
2. Dip into the Scriptures and take a look at what it says about YOU.
The looking glass for our ‘perfect wife, mom, family and home’ should really be the Bible, not media and everything it portrays. Learn what it says about who you are, who you are meant to be and what your levels are. And then LOVE THE HECK OUT OF YOURSELF while striving for your best.
3. Write/Consciously work out your pattern for your life
Immerse yourself in God’s Word, find what it says about you, your family, your role as wife and mother, and then set in your heart ‘This will be my ideal, my standard; this is what I, by God’s grace, will allow to be the pattern for my life and family.” Settle it in your heart & find your peace.
4. From today, be aware of your internal dialogue & master it
Be aware of what dips your mood, your esteem or your outlook on certain things, and nip them in the bud. Become a more self analysing person, questioning what you believe and why. Dig deep and change!
Above The Daily Grind 