Blog Archive-Best — Jayna Russel

This week I shared a couple of super cute pictures of my daughter on social media. Which isn't noteworthy in and of itself, because every living, breathing creature in the Milky Way Galaxy does that. I think there are strange extraterrestrial beings living on the sixth moon of Jupiter who have Instagram feeds.

But I'm starting to digress.

The pictures this week are noteworthy because my beautiful, photogenic little princess also had double ear infections and a mean case of pink eye. Which means that this week consisted of more than a few tears, tantrums, and instances of me having to force feed her vials of Amoxicillin.

And as I was in the throes of a mommy meltdown last night after way too many long days cooped up inside the house with said princess, I was suddenly struck by the irony of my own actions.

I recently watched a video about the correlation between Facebook use and depression. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, particularly the significance of social comparison in the equation. It's something I think we're all aware of. We go on Facebook, we compare our reality to our friends' "reality," and wake up three and a half hours later with a raging headache, a cramping hand, and an unquenchable need to binge on tortilla chips and Game of Thrones. For the next five days.

Maybe it's not Facebook's fault. Maybe it's our own. But it still sucks the big one.

And last night it occurred to me how very in cahoots I am with my own dysfunction.

The truth is that real life is not always very pretty. It's certainly not as pretty as an Aviary-edited, Lark-filtered version of the original. At least it doesn't appear to be at first glance.

I suppose I'm writing all of this because I want to out myself. I want to call my own bullshit and tell the truth behind my pictures. This week I've been doing a lot of pretending, and I want you, dear reader, to know that.

The truth is that sometimes being a mom exacts a heavy toll. It's one I pay willingly and with great joy. And yet every caretaker knows that, at times, you are often required to give far beyond the reserves of an empty storehouse. It wouldn't make for a pretty photo, but it's the truth.

Sometimes life is hard, even when it's good. And sometimes it can feel like you've lost your way, even when you're exactly where you're meant to be.

The truth is that, no matter how doctored up a photo might be, nothing can compare to the brilliant technicolor madness of real life. My pictures might have been cute, but nothing can convey the scent of my daughter's hair or the heat of her head resting against my chest. Nothing can capture my heart-breaking love for her as I watch her breathe and cut her toast and pray for all the days of her youth.

These are things that the computer misses, in all of its infinite wisdom. And we might miss them too, if we fail to look with wisdom and discernment.

So just in case I've been overly contributing to the monster-machine of social comparison this week, I just want to say that I am a real-life, tempestuous human being with a beautiful, untidy mess of a life.

There is a real life behind our photos. It is imperfect, but it is real. And that's something I hope none of us will ever forget.

Cheers!

This passed weekend my husband and I reconnected with some amazing friends we haven’t seen in a while. They have two darling little boys, and we spent a lovely Sunday afternoon relaxing by their pool.

Towards the end of the evening, we adults congregated around the table to chat while the kids played on the lawn. Their boys have this pretty impressive Jeep Power Wheels, and my daughter and their youngest son got in it together.

Among its many amenities, the Jeep had a radio, tuned to the nostalgic sounds of country music, and the littles spent a good half hour sitting together, still in their bathing suits, dancing and listening to tunes while their blonde heads glowed in the setting sunlight.

At one point, they both paused in the middle of it all and looked at each other. Their eyes met in this tender moment, and it was like they were really seeing each other, realizing they were sharing this beautiful moment together. These two tiny, innocent little hearts were bearing witness to all the beauty colliding in that one moment.

Then the moment passed, and they kept on playing.

Nineteen (yikes!) years ago, almost to the day, I went on a date with a quirky, energetic blonde kid I met at church. I think he had all of $10 in his pocket, and barely had enough money to pay for parking and the ice cream I asked for. He was emotionally healthy and stable in a way I didn’t know was possible, especially coming from the instability and chaos of my fragile home life.

We walked around for a while, then sat on one of those benches near the pond in the middle, where the ducks congregate on mounds of plushy, green Korean grass. We talked for hours, probably about our passion for our faith, and our dreams to make a different in the world. We might have made tentative plans, starting to make tiny promises to each other that would turn into big promises later.

I wonder, after seeing the sweet innocence of my daughter with her new friend, if we might have had that same look all those year ago, on that bench in Seaport Village. If someone passing by might have seen the tender innocence on our faces, untainted by the hits and bruises that life would bring our way.

It can be hard to remember that now, when love often seems to get lost in the muck and mire of everyday life, among all the unceasing demands of work and home and family. It’s that sweet innocence that gets lost, and sometimes, the longer the road, the harder it can be to find your way back.

A lot of life has happened since that first date. Most of it has been good, great, amazing. A little bit of it has been hard, and sometimes it’s those little bits that seem to take up the most room.

If I could go back and talk to that young girl sitting on the bench, I’d tell her that it’s going to be hard- harder than she could imagine. That life will make a battle-worn soldier out of her. And that it’ll cultivate a strength in her that will make her proud.

But most of all, I’d tell her to look closely at the face across the table from her, at the hands that are co-creating this life around her. To listen to the voice that returns home with stories of laughter and pain. I’d tell her not to forget that spunky boy she fell in love with. I’d tell her that he’s still right there, and that the journey is just getting started.