If you were a better mom, you would...

Ever hear that one pop through your head?  Or some version of it.  To make it more universal, you fill in your own blank:

If you were a better ____________, you would...

Just now I was sitting at the table reading through my daughter's written assignments as I ate my breakfast.  I was minding my own business.  Doing what a good homeschool mom ought to be doing: multitasking while sitting down and eating.

Out of nowhere, I think: "If you were a better mom, you would have been more creative with those bandannas you gave as party favors over the years at your children's birthday parties.  You would have had every party attender sign one for your children at each party.  You would have collected them for your children and made them into a quilt for them."

What?

Talk about an imagination.  While I might like to think that if I would've thought of that back then and started said collection that I would someday make them into a quilt, the reality is, the collected bandannas would've sat in a bag somewhere reminding me of yet another project that hasn't gotten done.

As it is, apparently they sit in my head as a figment of my imagination and are a project never even started that the enemy just devised right now for me to get anxious and distraught over.

Because what mom in her right mind doesn't create amazing bandanna quilts for her children as a souvenir of umpteen capture-the-flag birthday parties?

Well, this one doesn't and hasn't.  And that doesn't make me better or worse mother.

And since that "imagination" was so far out in left field (as they are progressively getting to be...the enemy is really overplaying this hand...), I caught it pretty quickly and didn't go down the path of "geeze-what a rotten mom I am for not doing that..."  I demolished it with divine power and am making my thoughts obedient to Christ.

Now back to grading papers...

~peace