Truth in advertising

For the past week and the next three, I'm participating in a promotion Chevrolet is doing in the St. Louis area. The company asked six local "mommy bloggers" to test-drive either the new Traverse or Equinox and blog (and video log) our experiences for them here. It's called the "Mommy Madness" campaign.

It's been fun so far. I'm definitely enjoying the new ride (our own van has 198,000 miles on it, and let's just say that new car smell is gone), and I'm even getting handy with the Flip video camera Chevy gave me to record everything I do with it.

Oh, and I've also discovered that talking into a handheld camera is semi-therapeutic---a perk, if you will (and cheaper than an actual psychiatrist).

I'm doing my best to present my experiences in as good a light as possible for Chevy, but I confess there are some things I've thought twice about before blogging about them. Granted, they're not big things (as you can see in the videos below, I had trouble figuring out how to open the gas cap and have had continual problems with the OnStar service), but I recognize there's a part of me that wants to be careful so no one comes and hauls my (temporary) ride away too soon.

This got me thinking: If someone goes on and on and on about how they have it all together---how their homes are perfectly kept 100 percent of the time, how their children embody the essence of the fruits of the Spirit, how they never get to week three of a four-week budget and stress about how they are doing to make it that last week---that really doesn't help me. Sure, I try to be happy for others when good things happen to them or when things are going well, but I know there's more to life than just the good stuff.

I find I am most encouraged by others who are honest about the same road I'm riding on---for instance, the homeschooling mama who has seriously wondered if her children wouldn't be better off learning in school after all because then they wouldn't argue as much, another mama who understands how debilitating stacks of laundry and dishes can be, and yet another mommy who, just yesterday, experienced the same internal meltdown I experienced today.

These conversations---all actual ones I've had in the past week---are the things that build me up as a struggling homeschooler, mother, and wife. I don't want to see perfection; I need to see imperfections redeemed. In other words, I need to know other mommies' OnStar buttons sometimes work as little as the one in my new test-drive Chevy Traverse.

I need to see grace worked out in real lives, not test-drives. I've got plenty of "mommy madness" to go around; sometimes I need to know there are other mommies on the road.