Coffee Colored Sofa

When Matt and I were married, I chose a sofa that distinctly matches the coffee stains I anticipated making. It’s one of the few decisions I’ve made in my adult life that I’m absolutely confident I will never regret.

Because, I LOVE coffee. And I spill coffee. A lot.

Because I’m imperfect, there is always work to do. Work that will hopefully result in me being a better human being. One who is such a mess, must have priorities to make any progress. [tweet this] My priorities are to increase my patience, learn how to care for and identify with people I think I have little in common with, and learn how to best share the gifts I have with the world (despite my obvious messiness). Spending my energy learning how not to spill coffee only distracts from those. And it’s true. I never was and never will be a pageant queen. That ship has sailed. I’ll also never be a traditional stay-at-home-mom with a pristine home. And I’ll never be the working mom who blow dries her hair (or showers) everyday. Never is a strong word, but I say never because those things are completely inconsistent with what I want most in the world. “Looking together,” in my opinion, is always an illusion of some sort and illusions only distract me from connecting with other human beings. Doing my “nevers” would be tragic, because they so obviously are inconsistent with my priorities. [By the way, I realize your “nevers” and my “nevers” don’t likely match and I’m not judging you if you DO go to work each day with perfectly blow dried hair or if your house looks like a museum. Some people do these things while fulfilling their purpose. I just can’t. Which says a lot about me and absolutely nothing about you.]

While some are great at “looking together,” none of us truly have it together. And, truthfully, the most memorable moments of my life are moments where I’ve connected with others on the common ground of messiness. THESE are the moments I would not trade.

None of this is about changing my perception and pretending the imperfections don’t exist. For me, it’s about gracefully embracing my most obvious unimportant imperfections so they are less of a distraction from the things that really matter. The coffee colored sofa consistently blends one of my unimportant imperfections into our life. Due to our sofa color, I feel less messy and our house has a calm tone, even though, it’s truly gross (but it smells delightful). While I’ll admit, I think “peace” and “comfort” are ideals that far too often become false idols, “calm” and “consistent” are, in our unusual family, worth aiming for. With calm, we, very messy people, are better able to focus on connecting with each other. For us, a little calm goes a long way.

While marriage is hard work, raising children is beautiful and messy, and raising children through adoption is beautiful and complicated in more ways than I could possibly mention here, sometimes it’s nice to console myself with the fact I’ve got at least one thing going for me.

Eleven years ago, I chose the right color sofa.