Long ago I learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever.
Ps. 119:152
I'm home from school and Henry is down for his nap. It might be 12:30 or 1:15; his naps are a little more flexible these days depending on his morning. So my afternoons are flexible too. I'm at the table with my lunch of choice this week: grilled ham and swiss sandwich and crunchy green grapes. It's my little oasis before deciding how to spend nap time. Lately my life tasks are divided into two categories: things I can do when Henry is awake, and things I can't. I try to mentally pare my list down to things I can only do when he's sleeping.
Vacuum the floors upstairs? Nope. That will wake him.
Start prepping for dinner? No, that's easy enough to do while he's awake.
Put all that stuff away in the attic? No, those creaky stairs are right beside his room.
Cut some greens and blooms for a fresh bouquet? Nah, he'd love to run around outside with me.
Fold the laundry? Oops. I already did that yesterday.
And so I find, to my disappointment, that all those chores piling up are actually doable when Henry's awake. And that what I actually can't do while he's awake is the restful things: reading a book, paging through a magazine, working on a blog post, browsing the internet for recipes. So I push the chores off until later, grab a book, cozy up in the den and try not to feel guilty while I wait for my boy to wake up.
A schedule-lover since my earliest memories (I even made myself schedules for summer vacation as a little girl, hating the thought of completely unstructured time), I'm watching motherhood pull me away from my most ingrained tendencies. I still put all of Henry's toys in their baskets... most evenings. But sometimes there are wooden puzzle pieces under the couch cushions in the morning. I still list the week's meals on the marker board in the kitchen. But sometimes we just scramble up eggs for dinner instead. I still try to keep my house clean and the laundry washed and the closets organized. But occasionally I'll wonder when the last time was that I washed the towels or cleaned the toilets (ok, most of the time I can't remember when I last cleaned the toilets).
What I discover most immediately, when I'm wondering how I could have spent the last 25 minutes on pinterest, is that my default emotion is guilt. Self-bashing for shirking my duties. "Why weren't you washing those dishes? Aren't there clothes to fold? Didn't you notice the living room needs dusting?" And I don't think that household management should be driven by guilt. In fact, the only thing that should be driven by guilt is the eliminating of hateful attitudes and hurtful actions. Very little of my guilt is legitimate in that sense. I don't usually feel guilty about those things.
Duty rouses guilt. What the heart prioritizes, it is ashamed to neglect. Whatever's been made most important moves to the top of the to-do list and becomes a life-guiding task. The heart will be satisfied when those duties are completed and will wallow in discontent while they remain undone. So as I sit at the table feeling guilty about wasting an hour with a grilled cheese and Real Simple, I'm revealing my heart's truest priorities. I don't often feel guilty about avoiding people or justifying an angry comment. I feel guilty about avoiding a sinkful of dishes and defending an unvacuumed rug.
So instead of worrying so much about household management, maybe my time would be better spent in heart management, rewriting my priorities to align with what really matters. I've got plenty of afternoon naptimes to devote to cleaning up my list of most important duties. We all know I'm not getting much else done in those free times anyway.
Grateful this week for:
crayons
direct deposit
This Old House
dirty baby feet
kettle corn
the smell of rain-soaked forest in the morning
baby nap on my lap
old buildings
grassy fields
Small Group
oatmeal pancakes
garden trowel
front row seats
No comments:
Post a Comment