The Bright side

You know that super annoying phrase “look on the bright side!” It typically processed something ridiculouly stupid like spilling your drink on your shirt, or your kid peeing on the floor.
Well, I’ll let you in on my little secret. I am normally the one saying that phrase! Today Wyatt peed on my foot while I was making a post about self control and patience. How ridiculous right?! Well as I was on my hands and knees cleaning up yet another puddle I thought, “well, at least my floors are getting a good cleaning! I typically don’t scrub them like this!” I know, you can quietly hate me a little for being miss cheery in that moment.

If you have been following me for any length of time you know that I have my days, or months. I am pretty open about the struggles and reality of mothering and homeschooling 4 kids. BUT lately I have been making big strides with myself. I have forced myself to get up before the kids so that I don’t wake up to demands of breakfast and after we are done with school for the day we have mandatory “leave mom alone” time. It might sound weird to some of y’all but the kids know that during this tim they are to help each other out as much as possible and let me brain rest. Some days it isn’t long but it helps so much.

I have also tried really hard to put things into perspective. I feel like this has been one of the most beneficial things for me to be able to look on the bright side. The other day when we were working on grammar one of my kids absolutely flipped. Like shove the table, scream and throw her pencil at the wall. (Too much honesty?? Hahah) In that moment OF COURSE I was frustrated, well first shocked then confused then frustrated, then about 10 seconds later it hit me. ON THE BRIGHT SIDE isn’t it wonderful that she is here at home dealing with these huge emotions instead of at school either shoving those feelings deep down and exploding on one of us when she got home, or letting her emotions out and getting in trouble or having 20 eyes judging her.
Here she is safe. Here she has a mother that can get to the root of the problem with her. Here she can walk away and take a breather so that she can move forward with the day.

I feel like I could talk about this forever and really easily sound super cheesy but friends, it works! It so works! If looking on the bright side is not something that comes really natural for you force yourself to try any ways. Try it on everything! Right now a big storm is starting to roll through. My husband is 30 minutes away at work and I’m feel vulnerable living on the lake and none of our neighbors are home. It was starting to get real anxiety. Then I choose to force myself to look on the bright side. Yes there is a tornado warning. BRIGHT SIDE: how lucky are we that we have a basement we could go to for safety. BRIGHT SIDE: I put dinner in the instapot earlier today because we typically have tumbling and evening are crazy. Tumbling is canceled but now dinner if ready so if we lose power in the storm we will have a great meal waiting for us anyways. BRIGHT SIDE: The closest fire station is Less than a mile from our house. so if anything happened help is literally 2 minutes away. BRIGHT SIDE: my kids are all here with me so we can get through the storm together.

No matter now small your bright side might be I promise you it will help Every. Time.