I feel the need to clarify something(s). You might not care, but then again, you might.

Two things you need to know today.

First: Yesterday, I posted these hipster photos of our living room. {To Instagram and Facebook}. Our new bookshelves, built by the Husband. Our Easter Mantel {inspired by Mrs. M}. A photo wall collage that was, until yesterday, haphazardly stashed around the room.

My sweet cousin made a lovely comment about them, the mantel in particular, which, while appreciated, made me realize something important.

I am unapologetically excited about our sweet home and the prospect of the living room being fully decorated and project free … but I am not telling you the whole story. I am not photographing the entirety of our life.

So let me be clear … my life is chaos. When I post hipster photos of my living room, this … this is behind the camera. Dishes from two nights ago piling up. Mounds of stuff collecting in odd locations, longing for their rightful place. Most of the rooms in my house currently resemble the kitchen, NOT the living room.

And when I show you my mantel, praising the Risen King, I don’t add in the muddy pawprints in a lovely random pattern swirling across my wooden floors. {I don’t bother mopping ever with rain in the forecast.}

And, oh, did I mention how this nesting mama, reveling in her bookshelves, started her day? I didn’t? Well, let me tell you … Wee Man removed his diaper at some point in the night, peed all over his bed, got out of bed, and pooped on his carpet. Messy, sticky poop that travels. And because this tired pregnant mama didn’t immediately jump to attention at the siren call of her tiny drill sergeant, he had ample opportunity to track it all around his bedroom.

So after throwing him in the bath despite his howls of protest, I spent forty-five minutes on my hands and knees scrubbing poop spots on the carpet. With upholstery cleaner, because of course I was fresh out of carpet cleaner.

I think his room still smells of poop, but that might just be the lingering trauma.

Yes. There is chaos here.

Don’t be fooled. There is real, messy life happening just outside the four walls of my iPhone camera and I don’t want to be too prideful to show it.

Which brings me to point number two: My chaos is a direct reflection of my blessings, and I don’t say thank you enough. I am so arrogant in my casual acceptance of the overwhelming riches I’ve been given.

At least forty percent of the books on those fresh-stained shelves would put me in jail in a good portion of the world. These people … homes, belongings burned … their crime was loving Him, the Savior. Their chaos is distinctly different than mine … and still, for so many moments, I am ungrateful.

The chaos in my kitchen represents an abundance of food that close to a billion people in the world can only dream of. And I despair over dirty dishes and crusted floors.

The poop on my carpet … well, I love my Wee Man. And I will clean up his poop. And I will praise God for the children of my Hannah prayers.

There are infinitely more.

Count your blessings with me, friend.

There will be more hipster photos. {I have an addiction.} But my heavenward plea is that the heart seeping out in the photos is honest, open, and ever-grateful.

That even in my chaos, His grace is forefront, inexpertly framed in the photograph, telling all of my messy stories.

~M.