What did we do all weekend?!? That is the question as I survey my house on Monday mornings. Our weekends seem to be a blur of a mess after all that. There are piles & piles of laundry & dishes all around and the kids are asking to go to the pool because it's now summer and that's what they expect everyday I guess. We had a weekend of nothing and everything. There was nothing really ON our calendar but I think those are the weekends that fill my needy heart the most. After a long church day, staying up unexpectedly last night talking with girlfriends till the wee hours of the morning left me a sleepy momma this morning, but it also made me a happy one. Because in the midst of the chaos around me this morning I'm better off. I'm better because of those around me who help me to grow, encourage me to step out in what I'm walking through and challenge me to see the important things IN life.
I've been hard on myself lately because as I try to grow my business I just don't have time to blog ABOUT the parties I do because I'm usually working on the next one. And I know that's really the way to grow in what I do. So I usually just throw out an instagram and hope people like what I do and pass it along. I was telling Daniel last week while we were setting up a party... I just don't know how all these party bloggers do it... telling him all the crazy pictures I see and the set ups they do. I went on to tell him how many of them are paid by companies to style or rather "stage" parties. Meaning... it's not a real party. It's a FAKE party set up to give you ideas of how to use the products. All well-intended and a good idea really. But again, it's not a REAL party. They are paid & receive unlimited resources to create an imaginative party for you. I'd rather be in on the REAL thing, wouldn't you? The real mess of it all. The real problems of having a party are hard to deal with. You set up a party in the middle of the life happening around you. It's not just a pretty dessert table, set up on a lonely wall with a beautiful backdrop that looks unachievable & untouchable.
At the graduation party I set up last week the first guests started arriving and no one was touching the milk & cookies table. They were all just standing looking at it... Finally I said to some of them- "GET IN THERE... EAT SOME COOKIES! DRINK SOME MILK" A few minutes later a guy came over with an almost empty mason jar of milk and said, "Man, I'm lactose intolerant but that was delicious!!!" I laughed and his wife rolled her eyes and ate another cookie.
See that's why I wanna be IN on the party. I want to enjoy the time & ones around me. Last night as the moms I was with were talking about the pressures of life and feeling the need to just "checkout" sometimes one of my wise friends said that recently she read a devotional reminding her that God's resources to us are unlimited. His GRACE is unlimited to us. She said she saw it as an ocean. Many times we walk over and scoop up what we need for the day and walk through our day carrying it as it seeps through our tired fingers until in runs out. It runs out. Then we explode. On our kids or our husbands or our already worn down house. But what we should be doing is realizing there is an ocean to dip from constantly. His unlimited resources. So when I feel like I can't stay IN the party... I can't keep up. I CAN keep dipping into HIS resources.
