Those Who Matter

I have been a mom for 10 years now.  Recently, our oldest daughter, Brainiac, celebrated her tenth birthday.  Our youngest daughter, Scrat, also recently celebrated a birthday.  We combined their "family and family friends" party into one and held it yesterday afternoon.  Everything went off just fine, but there were a few things that even just last year would have had me sweating bullets. What were they?

Nothing important.  Seriously, in the grand scheme of things these 2 or 3 imperfections were nothing important and yesterday, I took them as that.  But last year or 5 years ago, I would have been crying about them.  The difference?  I've honestly learned to live by the quote:

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind, don't matter, and those who matter, don't mind."

Yesterday, I didn't say or feel anything in particular.  But the second part of the quote was in my mind as I raced to finish up the cleaning and the baking, and fretted that the frosting wasn't being cooperative on the darn beautiful butterfly cake.  See, we were gone all day Saturday at a family function and then had church yesterday morning, so I had about 3 hours between church and the party to finish everything up and bake a cake. 

"These people are our family and friends.  They will not care about the dog-nose prints still on the window, or that the floor was only swept, not mopped.  And if they do care...that's their problem."

I'm telling you, if you can honestly feel this and live it, it's absolutely freeing!  My stress about yesterday's party was so low, even with 30 people in my house, nose prints on the window and frosting that wasn't perfectly smooth.  We all had a great time and no one mentioned anything.  As a matter of fact, Scrat told me that the cake was "Perfect!  Mommy, it's so beufiful!" I think that's all I need.