CLARKSTON, MI - Stacey Sullivan, a 35-year-old wife and mom, recently admitted to reporters that pressure to not have it all together was starting to take its toll on her.
"It's so trendy right now for Christian women to be hot messes who don't measure up," Sullivan said. "I see all these pictures on Pinterest of messy laundry rooms, disorganized refrigerators, minivans that are a total disaster area…that's just not me."
When pressed for details, Sullivan confessed that her laundry room is actually quite tidy and that, despite the fact that she has two children under eight, her minivan is not cluttered with empty water bottles, crumpled homework pages, or discarded fast food wrappers. She also acknowledged that she sometimes spends a half hour in the evenings listening to her second-grader doing his assigned reading for school. "He loves it," she said, "but I get overwhelmed by this nagging sense of guilt. All my mom friends are Facebooking about lost permission slips and hellish snow days. It's just so much pressure."
Sullivan went on, "I just want to feel like I am enough, you know? That Jesus doesn't love me any less just because I'm a fairly organized mom who, on most days, accomplishes what needs to be done for herself and her family with a smile on her face."
When her husband suggested that perhaps she "leave Jesus out of this," Sullivan burst into tears and headed outside to sprinkle some Cheerios on the back seat of the family van and then Instagram the results.