EXTRAPOLATE AT YOUR OWN RISK

This week I really enjoyed Brittany Tuttle’s piece at the Christianity Today blog for women, about how blogs, Facebook, et. al, DO NOT equal the whole picture.

Does this sound familiar:

“Countless times I’ve logged onto Facebook, Twitter, or my favorite blogs only to see vintage-filtered vignettes of other people’s seemingly perfect lives. There are my friends, on tropical vacation (again). There are my favorite bloggers, wearing artsy duds, sitting in their homes that look like exact replications of the Anthropologie catalog. And there are their children, perpetually glossy-haired and rosy-cheeked and smiling.

Meanwhile, here I sit in my untidy home in the cold of January, wearing an old college t-shirt. My kids are fighting in the background. Reading these blogs, seeing these profiles, often feels like browsing a fashion magazine. It’s fun to look at, but afterward I feel inferior and inadequate and ugly and fat.”

That? Right there? That captures it so well. I went through a period of real distress before I realized that no, I do not have to have five kids and live on a farm in Maine and grow and preserve all my own food and either knit or sew new slipcovers/cushions/quilts/cozies for everything and raise pigs just because SouleMama does and looks darn cute doing it and it seems like her kids are always peaceful and empathetic and never screaming or creating mayhem (like mine are.)

I think all blogs, maybe even this one, should have bold disclaimers:

THIS IS NEITHER THE WHOLE PICTURE NOR THE WHOLE STORY. EXTRAPOLATE AT YOUR PERIL!

I won’t give away Brittany’s grace-filled conclusion. It’s worth going over to read the whole post for yourself.

Enjoy the weekend! I will see you on Monday!