On Thursday my neighbor came over at 7pm to see if I would come visiting teaching with her. She happened to come in just as everything in the house was falling apart. Not only was every inch of the house a complete disaster, but the girls decided to have their worst fight of the week. They were yelling at each other à la Anastasia and Drusella from Cinderella, filling the halls with their high-pitched insults and screams. Clarissa was augmenting those lovely sounds with her own full-throated screams, and Abe trying his best to extricate himself from the mess as fast as possible so he could be on time to basketball.
My neighbor and I had to yell at each other to hear above the noise, and even then we couldn’t hear each other. Somehow (I wonder how?) she came to the conclusion that I was unavailable for the evening.
After she left, everything calmed down and got sorted out, and when everyone was asleep and the house was clean, I sat down to stress-eat and reflect on the day. My first instinct was to be embarrassed that I had been caught in such a low moment, but my next thought was that it wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
On Thursday my neighbor got to see our whole family in complete chaos. In today’s world of social media, it is a gift to see anything imperfect. The high moments that we see and share are probably, for the most part, just as real as the low moments, but real life is full of highs, lows, and the mundane in-between. As long as we’re sharing segments, we might as well share reflections of the balance.
The balance is beautiful.