Pinterest and a Turkey Sandwich

Can I just tell you a little secret? I love Pinterest. But that's not the secret. I'm pretty sure everyone I know loves Pinterest. The real secret is that whilst perusing all of the beauty, the hilarity, the creativity, the gorgeous professional photography in every.single.stinking.pin, I sometimes start to feel a tinsy bit small. I start to feel the way I did my first week at BYU.

I had just graduated highschool three weeks earlier, with a two digit graduating class in a town of 1800 people. I knew how to conjugate a sentence, and I had all of my teeth. I was kind of on top of the world there. {I love you John Day. I really, truly do.}

It was quite a shock for me to be thrown into a world where everyone was pretty. Where everyone was intelligent. Where everyone was gifted and extremely talented. Where, it seemed, everyone could do all of the unique things that made me, me...even better than I could. It only took a couple days for me to realize that my pedastal looked more like a rickety three legged step stool among that crowd.

After reeling in new found self-sorrow for one full week, I was asked to serve as the Relief Society President of my dorm ward. While I fully understand now, that serving in that role in a student ward requires not even a smidgen of the time, effort and soul that it takes in a real ward, at the time, I felt a little overwhelmed. In part, because I wasn't really sure what a RS president did. I had, after all, only attended RS three times before I left home. But also because I thought there were several other girls who seemed better equipped to play that part. While serving, I quickly learned that what my sisters needed most, was just to know that someone knew them. Like me, most of the girls in my dorm were feeling a little lost, a little overshadowed ~and simply to know that someone knew their name, and cared about them made an enormous difference. I wasn't the prettiest, the smartest, the funniest, the most talented or the best dressed...but I was blessed to remember every single one of those girls' names and where they were from, and I got to know, truly, who most of them were. I couldn't recite any of those things for you today... but it made a difference at the time. And I mattered. What I did was important.

So after browsing Pinterest and beginning to seriously doubt my own abilities in comparison...I find the need to take a step back and remember who I am trying to make a difference for at this time in my life. Who do I matter to today? What have I done that is important - today? Often, my answers for those questions are: my babies. my husband. my close friends. And usually, the most important things I've done during the day are not writing or designing. They are usually mom things, like making a home lunch for my third grader, even though we were way behind schedule, because she was convinced she had a field trip today and needed to bring lunch to eat on the bus on the way there, and was panicking more with every breath that I might not have time to throw together a meal for her, even though I was 100% positive she was wrong, and knew with certainty that she would be in school, all day, and dining in the cafeteria ~ but instead of pointing this out to her and shooing her out the door like I felt inclined to do, I kissed her on the head, whipped together a lunch complete with oreos for dessert, and told her to call me from school if there really was a field trip form that I needed to rush to the office to fill out, but to not be disappointed if somehow she didn't end up on a special outing. That was important today. I mattered to her today. I made a home lunch, and I listened.
Those were my big accomplishments of the day. I can't really pin that achievement for everyone to like or repin. I didn't take a breathtaking picture of the turkey sandwich I made to go with this story. But, that doesn't matter. I am kind of a big deal inside my own home...and that's where it counts.

The end.