jukes, mocks, and the mean games mamas play

I’ve written about Jon Acuff  on the blog before, he spoke at Blissdom last year and sort of rocked my world. My short attention span means I pay attention to a speaker for a solid 15 minutes, then as the time progresses, I disengage. I’m thinking about life and things I need to do, I try to reign in my focus, but as I scan the crowd, Ohhh, I wonder where that shirt is from? Then it happens, my focus is gone and my mind becomes this pinball machine of thoughts, How in the world did she get her hair to curl like that? Did she use hot rollers or a curling iron? Wait, did I unplug my curling iron?  On and on I go until I have mentally left the building.

There is one thing that can change this, humor. Keep me laughing and I’ll keep listening. Make me cry? I’m not thinking of anything else. Challenge the way I see things, the way I live my life? You’ve gained an active listener and a fan. Jon Acuff is one of the few who has been able to do just that, I recommend him to others and read his blog and follow his tweets because I believe what he is saying and I believe his heart is full of purpose and inspiration.

He coined this great catch phrase,  Jesus juke, and we have all been privy to a juke of this nature. In Alabama, I live in the heart of SEC country, in the midst of one of the biggest rivalries in sports, the Iron Bowl. You can bet that the following Sunday in church, someone will be ecstatic about the outcome, oozing with passion, and then someone will say, Wouldn’t it be great it we were all this passionate about Jesus?  At that moment, everyone goes from feeling like a million bucks to feeling like they just stood up and declared that football is cooler than Jesus, at a Billy Graham crusade.

Now, I’ve been privy to a Jesus juke (0r 40) in my lifetime, but it wasn’t until I became a mother that I learned a whole other type of shame-inducing tactic. For the sake of creating clever names, let’s just call this the mama mock. If you’re on Twitter and you actively engage with other moms (because know this, women are meaner behind a computer screen), I’m wiling to bet that 95% of you have been privy to this ugly game women like to play.

Let me set the scene, it’s Valentine’s day and I have a two-year-old. My creative-holiday-loving-heart is more than excited to express a little creativity and make some cute Valentine’s for BK to hand out to her classmates. I scour Pinterest and buy up play-doh and cookie cutters, I create a graphic in Photoshop with an overly-cheesy saying. I am a rock-star Valentine favor creator and BK is going to be ecstatic. I tuck the goodies away in her back-pack, but not before snapping a picture to share.

Then it happens, Since when is Valentine’s day a competition of Pinterest creations? And my personal favorite? All of these personalized Valentine’s… I can’t, I just don’t have the time nor do I want to take the time away from my kids to impress others. 

Ouch. 

Game. Set. Match.

Sometimes, I sit back and watch as the drama unfolds, like a bad train wreck. Mama’s who are posting a picture of a breakfast table set with green goodies for St. Patrick’s day or children smiling ecstatically holding up golden coins from their scavenger hunt. Then they come, who has time for going overboard at every holiday? Or I’ll take the days of wearing green and hoping I didn’t get pinched over this competitive holiday we have now. I watch as mothers wage war on trends such as creatively styled first birthdays and  trendy patterns on toddler clothing. As they pass it off as opinion, and that’s okay, we all have preference. But if you’re the one making fun of someone’s over-the-top birthday party because that’s just not your thing, think about it you would be okay with the negativity coming your way if it were reversed.

As moms it’s about time we realize a few things:

We are all good at different things.  We are human, we will always like different things than other people, we have the freedom of preference and choice. Let’s just use it wisely. Be proud of your choices without dragging other people down. There is a balance and it falls somewhere in the middle, right next to being kind to everyone, not just to people who share your views on how many gifts Santa can bring.

There are no sides. We aren’t playing for the NFL, we aren’t campaigning for presidency, we are raising the next generation. Believe it or not, there is no underground Pinterest mom secret meeting and there is no Pinterest-haters club. There will be no Superbowl, no winners, no trophies. No one has ever showed up at my door and invited me to play for the moms who created their own baby food team or kicked me off of their team for using Similac. This mama-wars phenomenon? It’s a war we don’t have to be fighting.

Mockery fuels the War. We want our ideas to be appreciated? We want to express our beliefs without fear of judgement? Then we need to stop judging others, we need to stop pretending like there are two types of mothers and every parenting method is a battle. There is no Pinterest mom, there is no Similac mom, we have made that up. Have you ever had to check that box when you renewed your drivers license or applied for a job? No. Why? Because those are terms we’ve coined ourselves.

How can we change this? By being deliberate with our words, by owning our choices and allowing others to make their choices without criticism. There is a difference in sharing your thoughts, your beliefs, your choices because you are proud of them or because you think it might help someone else. Let’s use words we are proud of, be women that our children can be proud of and learn kindness from.

 

P.S- Jon Acuff has a new book out, you can check it out here.