In This House: The Actual VS. The Ideal

A couple of years ago I wrote a family mission statement, whose history I'll detail later, but it represented what we hoped for our family, the expectations for our children and what we wanted our home to be:

In This House
we show respect
In This House
we share
In This House
we do our best
In This House
we care
In This House
we tell the truth
and show integrity
In This House
we work and play
to build our family

It was our family's mission and mantra - I even created actions for my children to do as I had them repeat it over and over again. I felt inspired to start a blog about what we we're trying to do as a family to achieve this picture of near perfection.

That was 3 years ago.

Consumed by, what I've heard called, 'the paralysis of perfectionism', I couldn't do it. I couldn't blog about what I wanted to happen --when I knew the seedy underbelly of what was actually occurring behind closed doors.

A few months ago, I faced the music and wrote this:

In This House
we get unpleasant
In This House

we whineIn This House
we confess others' sins
and tattle ALL THE TIME
In This House

we lose our tempers

yell, and sometimes, scream
In This House

we pray our neighbours
are not listening.

So now this blog becomes about reconciliation --

The actual and the ideal

who we are with who we long to become,

trying and failing, and trying again.

Perhaps it's not an airing of metaphorical dirty laundry, so much as recognizing where the stains are and figuring out how to get them out.

And so we begin, the Shipley 5, uncut, uncensored, and we'd like to say unblemished,

but now we're here with our flaws in print.