Will the REAL Johnson family please stand up?

I read a blog post today about “fake family.” You know the family you make up in your head that you want to be… wishing you were, compare your selves to and strive for. The one where your kids never fight, they do what you ask the first time and they actually do it right. The one where your house is clean on a regular basis.

Yes, today I realized I have a fake family. My fake family has it all together, we have quality time together, we spent time outdoors getting exercise. Our house is clean and orderly, we are efficient and tidy and we handle everything that comes our way with grace, patience and dignity.Enter REAL family.

HELLO? Are you kidding me? We probably don’t spend enough quality time, not where someone doesn’t get annoyed with someone else. We are to fat, tired and busy to spend time gallivanting through the woods with a delicious, healthy picnic. Dog has completely taken over our house… we are at war with dog hair! We forget, lose things, make messes, slack off so they become bigger messes and are you sitting down? We totally freak out, yes, we yell, we scream, we fight, occasionally we give empty threats and more than once or ummm… ok, since we are real… more times than I can count, we totally lose our cool. Our children don’t have immaculate rooms; they don’t get straight A’s in school. They put off what needs to be done. Often I find dirty underwear on the bathroom floor. They bicker, make me ask 4 times to get out of bed and I personally don’t get as much appreciation as I think I should.

So surprise!!!!! We are not “fake family” we are Real family. I realized that I have spent my whole life chasing down fake family, trying to change my real family into fake family. Sometimes even convincing myself that everyone else has that fake family, I so desperately think I want.

So here’s the thing. No we aren’t perfect. None of us. Even that hairy dog. I need to stop expecting fake family to show up… they aren’t coming. Honestly I don’t think fake family would like real family very much. Fake family couldn’t hang with real family. Come to think of it, real family probably wouldn’t WANT to hang with fake family.

Maybe in our own way we are prefect… perfectly imperfect. We love each other, without a doubt. Even when we hurt each other, the love is always there. We laugh, sometimes (lots of times) my real family can make me laugh so hard it hurts… and I am in tears. We fight and we make up. We fall down and we get right back up. We forget, so we can remember. We make mistakes so we can find a better way.If your child always succeeded you wouldn’t get to feel that swell of pride you feel when they do. You wouldn’t see the delight of success on their faces either. They wouldn’t know what hard work is, because they’d never have to try and fail. None of you would ever be able to truly feel proud of their accomplishments.

You would never get to know how strong you really are. No, when life stinks, we may not handle our plight with grace or dignity. We handle it with courage, perseverance and guts. (This by the way at times looks like plain crazy.) We realize that as sad and scary as it may be… you may have to lose your way to get yourself going in the right direction.

Let’s face it life is hard. People will let you down, you will let yourself down. Things won’t turn out as planned, accidents, missteps, disasters, broken heart, broken dishwashers, they all happen. I guess what really matters are how you and your family come out of these things. We aren’t still a family because it’s always perfect and easy, it’s because we never fully gave up when it got too had. We have tasted defeat… and that made the little victories taste that much sweeter. We pull ourselves up each time we fall.

So I need to say good bye to my fake family. Let them go off in to their blissfully fake life. Time to say hello to the Johnson family! With all our bumps and bruises we are beautiful. I need to say good bye to fake me too. With all my imperfection I need to remember that I too am beautiful. Let go of all the expectations I put on myself, and those I feel from all around me. The ones I know deep down I can’t and maybe realistically don’t even want, to deliver on. I no longer want to compare myself to others… because I know we all only let people see the pretty parts. I will be more authentic. Stick up for who I am. I will start making my family feel perfect, because I know they are perfect for me.

Bottom line is perfect is how you see things, maybe perfect is in the eyes of the beholder. If I take a step back and look, I see a perfectly, beautiful family. We have it right where it matters. We are kind, we laugh, a lot, we give, we hug, we share, we forgive, we try harder and we stick together when times are tough. We forgive again, and we ask to be forgiven, we get up every day in an attempt to make it though this together and every day we do just that. I’d say that isn’t so shabby.

No we aren’t perfect… and we don’t have it all together. But we are a family, a real family, and I’ll take my perfectly imperfect family over a fake one any day. Sometimes reality can be pretty darned amazing.Now, if only I could find some way that I don’t have to give up fake me’s perfectly accessorized wardrobe. So this blog is a journey, my journey, to love and accept the world around me and everyone in it as perfectly imperfect as it is!