"What's On Your Mind?"

You know how some people post their status on Facebook ten times a day? I have to admit, it's something I love to hate and hate to love. When I'm stuck in bed wearing fat pants looking like I just got washed up on the banks of the Fraser River, I like to read these statuses and imagine my life as:

"lunch at the Cactus Club in Langley"

or...

"on our way to the Justin Timberlake concert!!!"

I'd even take...

"stuck beside man doing hot farts on flight to Calgary."

I'm not picky.

Now, if I were to post my statuses on Facebook for a day it would go something like this:

"accidentally brushed my teeth with Katie's toothbrush"

and...

"made a healthy kale and avocado wrap for lunch and then ate food court Chinese food instead"

which would be followed by...

"mistakenly covered my stretching belly skin with a lotion that I am severely allergic to and am now covered in a rash."

Obviously, this is why most people don't post stupid stuff like that on Facebook, but rather nice, pleasant updates. Their children say the sweetest things, their jobs are rewarding, their skin glows with vegan health, and their significant other is selling his dirt bike collection to buy her diamond earrings and a Bikram Yoga membership.

Nobody wants to know that Katie screamed, "don't TOUCH ME!!!!!!!" when I tried to brush her hair or that I ate half a jar of nacho cheese dip only to find the lid covered in mold once I had polished off the last drop.

I know that I post nauseating lovey-dovey posts about how much Andrew and I love each other. And that I'll write about how much I love my kids on their birthdays. I paint my life (we all do) a certain way but I do it with the assumption that you all know me well enough by now to know that my life is not perfect. And not only is it not perfect, but that I thrive in the mess because that's where love is found, and that grace grows in the cracks, right? Grace grows in the cracks.

Andrew and I adore each other enough to make everyone around us a bit nauseous, but don't get the bucket yet because we are well aware of our imperfections. The two of us have been through more adversity in our two-plus years of togetherness than a lot of lifetimers. We've had our share of rashes and moldy nacho dip. We take great pictures, but we don't post the ones where he's sitting broken and defeated at the end of our bed with his head in his hands, or the one of me after I got a piece of my nose burned off from potential skin cancer. Or when we're in the hospital being told that we're losing our baby.

We all want everyone to like us, right? To think we're not fat and ugly and that we don't yell at our children or eat carcinogenic hydrogenated oil and drink crown and coke with hardly any coke in it. What we have to remember is that no matter what we do, even if our pictures are cute and our kids are lovely and our husbands are charming, there will be a whole bunch of people who think we're idiots. And we have to just accept that.

The only people who matter (in our lives) are the ones who stand next to us. They don't have to like us all the time. They can find us annoying and frustrating and downright maddening but they see our rashes and our mold and our tears and scars and they love us anyway. Right here, right now. Day in, and day out.

And for them...

"I am thankful."