I’m taking a break from my series (31 Inspirational Women You Need To Meet) for a very important, relevant talk that we need to have. I think you and I need to get some things straight.

If you’ve been following my awesome series, at some point the following will happen to you.

1. Read post.
2. Smile, wipe away tears, and feel other General Positive Feelings.
3. Walk away.
4. Approximately 7.4 minutes later, experience a Normal Motherhood Or Life Disaster. Kid poops in the pants. Trail mix all over the floor. Husband late. On hold for 29 hours with the pharmacist. etc. etc…At which point you will:
5. Whine, complain, feel frustrated, or emit any other Normal Human Response...At which point you will:
6. Feel dejected. Here I am, with a perfectly nice family and happy house, and healthy kids, and THIS LITTLE THING IS BOTHERING ME? WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME? I’m a horrible person. Those women are rock stars, and no one will ever write a blog post about me over here, freaking out over how someone lost the Connect Four pieces. Boo me.

Perhaps this hasn’t hit you reading my series, but I’m sure it’s hit you before in general, viewing social media, reading books about inspirational people, or generally living life around other humans.

It is good to read inspirational stories, to be around inspirational women, but it’s easy to feel less-than, or behind, or discouraged about our own lives.

Here is what I want to tell you.

1. As I heard recently, you can’t compare your outtakes with someone else’s highlight reel. You can’t compare your inside to someone else’s outside.
2. And be encouraged. Because often what makes Heroes great is actually the hard thing, the boring thing, the One Thing We’d Change If We Could. It’s our weakness, usually!

See, the point is, heroes don’t know they’re being heroes at the time.

Mostly, being a hero is a whole stinkin’ lot of Boring Nothingness for people who don’t see it, won’t thank you, don’t care.

And to me, that is incredibly exciting. It incites a teensy bit of hope inside that I might be great, too, and that I’m actually doing it, becoming great, by all these Unglamorous Normal People Tasks I do faithfully.

• reading Brown Bear Brown Bear on repeat
• scraping burnt chicken stuff from the casserole pan
• “losing” at Checkers to my five-year-old
• sending off our Compassion money every month
• scratching my son’s back while he gets albuterol treatments in the middle of the night
• taking chili and cornbread to someone who needs it. And those sorts of things.

So be ye not discouraged, Normal, Un-famous Reader. Keep doing your thing. Eyes straight ahead, feet on the path.

You probably are somebody’s hero.

(You just don’t know it yet.)

jessica

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