coming "clean" with bird poop

I've been saving this photo for such a time as this.  I think tonight's the night.  This is me, on the beach of northern California last July.  I was enjoying an afternoon in the sun with Josiah asleep on my chest.  Roger and the rest of the kids and Dale and Lois were all splashing in the ocean, working on surfing.  We had been snacking around our beach camp earlier and had some crumbs and things around the chairs.  I noted a curious sea gull who had his eye on me.  He then began to do some fly over maneuvers, and eventually that bird pooped.  On my head.  I started to squeal and yell and curse.  Profanity.  Eventually Roger and Lois came up to see what all the noise was about and instead of grabbing a towel to wipe my forehead they were doubled over in laughter.  Little Josiah slept through it but he recounts this story often this summer for whatever reason.  Perhaps to punish me.  

You see, lately, I have been a crabby, potty-mouth, sarcastic, not joyful person.  I have a lot to deal with at work.  The house is such a mess all the time because no one but Violetta cares to clean it and I can only afford her every 3 weeks.  The dogs are annoying.  The dishes are unending.  The wet towels and swim suits breed these stupid bugs called "ear wigs" that are multiplying in my house even as we speak....and I'm crabby.  I'm overweight and I had hoped to have that dealt with by now but it just doesn't seem to improve.  48 is a hard year for me.  I feel too busy being a working career woman  to take care of my physical self.  I feel too shallow to admit it.  I feel too jealous of people who languish in themselves and can write or read or exercise or shop or do whatever the hell they do all day to make them have an easier time that I have.  And.  Basically.  I have bird poo on my head.  Literally and figuratively.  

I'm sharing this photo intentionally.  It's time to wipe the crap off my forehead and shoo away the bird.  I know I'm better than this self-loathing crap.  I know I have a great life and a purposeful life.....and because I saved this photo, I know that I can now share it and move on.

No one has any easy time of it, even if it may look easy to others.  No one has it all figured out.  No one gets a pass on hard things.  It is time to get the poo off my forehead and get up out of my lounger and start to deal.  I do not like who I am when I am sitting there in the sun, screaching because no one seems to notice the crap on me.  In this moment, I didn't wipe it myself because my child was asleep on me and I would have had to wake him to clean it up.  Tonight, in real time, the same child is beside me snoring quietly and I am swimming in my own pool of jealousy, inadequacy, bitterness and blech.  He won't wake up tonight if I decide to clean up my foul mouth, my negative thoughts, my bitterness.  Those prayers can and should be prayed quietly.....and so.  Father God.  Please forgive me.  Wipe me clean.  Help me to start fresh tomorrow with your smiles on my face and your Grace ahead of me.  Let this be the one and only picture of a face full of poo that I will experience.  Amen.