Being a Perfectly Imperfect Grandmother

This weekend I was blessed with two of my four grandchildren, Wesley and Alysa.  God couldn't have blessed me with two more precious loving children.  In saying this I must also mention that God has a sense of humor, both children are hyper active and extremely emotional.  Therefore time spent with them can be very nerve wrecking.

The important thing to know here is that I am not the conventional grandmother.  I am a free spirit grandmother and my grandchildren know and love that freakish side of me.  My dining room table does not hold a vase of fresh cut flowers.  Instead it is covered with art supplies and art projects my grandchildren and I have been working on.

What I have learned is that NONE of us ever feel like we are doing it (what ever IT might be) just right ... but that everyone of us is really doing our very best.  Being both a mother and grandmother is the hardest job I have ever had - the most precious, amazing, difficult job.  It is not always fun and there is so many things in our lives that simply stink....and I'm not good at that stinky stuff.

This weekend with Wesley and Alysa was one of the good stuff.  It began with a trip to the park to feed the geese and ducks.  While feeding the water fowl Wesley excitedly yelled for my attention.  (Everything Wesley does is "Excitedly".)  He had found a mother with her babies.  The perfect mother who had complete control over her ten baby ducklings.  The type of mother I had never been, not even now that I am a grandmother.

Later the children entertained me with plays they wrote, directed choreographed and acted in just for little ole me.  They were amazingly fun and imperfect as they are and as their grandmother is.  I recall doing the same decades ago to entertain my perfect grandmother.

That is when it hit me like a ton of bricks!  I thought then and now that I was blessed with perfectly wonderful grandparents.  They probably felt as imperfect as I do.  We all judge ourselves much too harshly.

Let's be good to each other.  Let's not compare ourselves to each other and let's not judge each other.  No one knows what goes on in our lives to make us behave as we do.  We are all imperfect one way or another.

Here's to celebrating the imperfect part of all of us!  Hip Hip Hooray!