Every now and then I attempt to be “that mom.” You know the one who wields a glue gun whilst craftifying something worth being on display at the Hobby Lobby.  And the one who joyfully reads aloud to her children without being sneaky and skipping pages.  Yes, her.

But it never works out for me.

I’m telling you the minute I start trying to shine my mommy halo, it slips down like a noose around my neck.  Take for example the brilliant time I decided to attend a book warehouse clearance sale.  I loaded up my kids and decided this was the perfect time to help my people fall in love with books.  I wrongly figured a sale could help anyone feel the literary love.  Not so.

My kids could have cared less about the books.

They wanted what was in a crate off to the side of all the book shelves.  The brightly colored packages were laced with promises.  I plucked one from my kid’s hands to read that this package contained the coolest science experiment kit.  Anytime a brightly colored package uses the words “cool” and “experiment” on the front, a mother should beware. Especially when said package is marked
down to $1.

She should be very wise and tell her children, “no.”

But I was tired from all the efforts to convince them to love books.  I rationalized in my brain that we’d dedicated our morning to this sale, we should at least walk out with something educational.  So, I bought several of the kits.

Sea monkeys.  That’s what the kits were supposed to grow. Key words, “supposed to.” Anyhow, my kids were beyond excited to get this party started.  So into the container went the chemicals, the water, the little food crystals and plastic green trees upon which the sea monkeys could play once they hatched.

It’s at this point I should share this is one of those ‘good news’ / ‘bad news’ stories.  Yes ma’am, which would you like first?

The good news… something did hatch.

The bad news… they weren’t sea monkeys.

After leaving the experiment overnight, I woke to find my kitchen invaded by the biggest, nastiest, hairiest, giant flies you have ever seen.  I’m not sure if our sea monkeys had some kind of mutation situation going on or if some sort of larvae had gotten into the packages we purchased and ate our sea monkeys.

Either way, it was awful.

The moral of this story is simple.  Some moms are equipped by the hand of God to be “that mom.” They have been formed with the 3 C gene.  Cooking, Crafting and Cleaning come easily and naturally to them.

Others of us have been delightfully chosen to provide the comic relief necessary to keep this world entertained. And to keep future therapists in business.

I feel certain I will be called into some counseling meeting one day where one of my kids reveals the great devastation caused by mommy having to kill the special “flying sea monkeys.”  Oh mercy.  Y’all will defend me, right?

By Lysa TerKeurst

Leave a Comment