Sorting
Thursday night I put the kids to bed and made my way to the basement to tackle the mountains of laundry that ever threaten to consume me. To give you some idea of what this looks like: I recently found myself standing in clean laundry knee high at 6:30 in the morning looking for a pair of clean underwear for E. "E!" I shouted up the stairs after rummaging unsuccessfully through the sea of fabric, "Did you find any yet?"
"Mommy, I'm right here," she replied from somewhere very near. My eyes darted about in the dim basement light. "I've been here the whole time," she stated matter-of-fact from inside the pile. I hadn't even noticed she was there, right next to me, camouflaged as she was by the heaps on the floor.
"You have?!" I laughed. "You mean we were both looking at the same time and I didn't even see you?"
"I guess so," she said.
"Oh my goodness, If my seven-year old can get lost in this, it's really gotten bad!"
So that's the state of the wash at our house. Picture tired mama in her Mrs. Claus pink and red bathrobe, choking up over the dirty version of this pile fanned out around her. It's not just the laundry, though that might have been the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. It's everything. It's the pressure of striving-always-striving to raise three littles well and falling-always-falling short of my own best intentions at:
A: Remaining calm in stressful situations. For example, I run to rescue the mop handle out of K's little fist just before he smashes it against the glass of a picture frame. I turn for a second, just a second, to set the mop down, and when I look at him again, he's drinking the dog's water. Ew! Quick pick up the dog dishes and turn around to find him climbing onto the table to reach his Ipad. Grab him and the Ipad and sit him down in a seat only to, seconds later, find him checking my email or maneuvering the thing so that he can delete apps and change menu titles. Get distracted by re-securing the Ipad and hear him now in the living room tearing pages from a book and climbing into the dog's crate. A day in the life of...and calm flies out the window.
B: Carving out time to do the things that make me feel most alive, most myself--such as traveling, and writing, and jogging, and praying, and spending time with Mark, and sitting in a quiet room with a cup of coffee and a good book.
C: Being a good and diligent and faithful mom to E who is growing so fast and still so much needs a mama who is present and authentic and attentive in her life, to A who is trying so hard to carve out an identity for herself that is uniquely hers, to K who needs daily intervention at so many levels so that he can tap his amazing and seemingly boundless potential to soar despite a diagnosis that predicts he won't climb quite as high as the rest. And those three things are just the tip of the iceberg.
D: Managing the daily tasks of appointments and school schedules and dance and swim and early intervention and preparing meals and tidying up the house.
E: Being a wife who is kind and good and grateful amidst all of this.
When I meet one set of needs well, it means I am letting another set or two or three slip, and I scramble to pick up all the pieces. Or I throw my hands up and cry a pile of tears into the muddle of dirty wash carpeting my basement floor. I am sure we all feel this way some days, feel the weight and grind and exhaustion of everyday life challenges and wish it could all be different. That night, I was convinced that someone else, anyone else, would be far better suited for the job of raising these three kids than me. I rattled off the litany of woes to Mark when he came home from a meeting and, expecting his wife, instead stumbled upon a bedraggled woman in a soggy bathrobe standing in the stinky socks. Oh boy.
A hug and a pep talk later, I was reminded that a handful of mistakes and missteps does not a bad mother make. I was reminded that the work is indeed hard and the hours are certainly long. It's OK to cry. It's OK to sense the weakness inherent in the frailty of our character. It's OK to lean on one another when one finds herself knee deep in laundry on a Thursday night with no sign of a clear path out. The path never is crystal clear, and that is just the state of things. So which perspective do I choose to embrace? The one that proclaims my inadequacies and failures from the rooftops, or the one that knows I already have all I need to travel this road. And this morning my Bible study leader reminded us in our study of Colossians: As we toil, we can depend on His strength to enable us. We already have all we need. It's already been given. And the beauty of our faith walk is not in the act of our first belief, but in the journey it begins for us--a journey with twists and turns, mountains and valleys that reveals to us the depth and magnitude and beauty of a thing called grace.
I take a deep breath and dive in with a fresher outlook, knowing I will find myself in that unsorted, stinky pile of wash again, knowing there will be days and probably more tears, but counting on love, counting on grace.
"Mommy, I'm right here," she replied from somewhere very near. My eyes darted about in the dim basement light. "I've been here the whole time," she stated matter-of-fact from inside the pile. I hadn't even noticed she was there, right next to me, camouflaged as she was by the heaps on the floor.
"You have?!" I laughed. "You mean we were both looking at the same time and I didn't even see you?"
"I guess so," she said.
"Oh my goodness, If my seven-year old can get lost in this, it's really gotten bad!"
So that's the state of the wash at our house. Picture tired mama in her Mrs. Claus pink and red bathrobe, choking up over the dirty version of this pile fanned out around her. It's not just the laundry, though that might have been the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. It's everything. It's the pressure of striving-always-striving to raise three littles well and falling-always-falling short of my own best intentions at:
A: Remaining calm in stressful situations. For example, I run to rescue the mop handle out of K's little fist just before he smashes it against the glass of a picture frame. I turn for a second, just a second, to set the mop down, and when I look at him again, he's drinking the dog's water. Ew! Quick pick up the dog dishes and turn around to find him climbing onto the table to reach his Ipad. Grab him and the Ipad and sit him down in a seat only to, seconds later, find him checking my email or maneuvering the thing so that he can delete apps and change menu titles. Get distracted by re-securing the Ipad and hear him now in the living room tearing pages from a book and climbing into the dog's crate. A day in the life of...and calm flies out the window.
B: Carving out time to do the things that make me feel most alive, most myself--such as traveling, and writing, and jogging, and praying, and spending time with Mark, and sitting in a quiet room with a cup of coffee and a good book.
C: Being a good and diligent and faithful mom to E who is growing so fast and still so much needs a mama who is present and authentic and attentive in her life, to A who is trying so hard to carve out an identity for herself that is uniquely hers, to K who needs daily intervention at so many levels so that he can tap his amazing and seemingly boundless potential to soar despite a diagnosis that predicts he won't climb quite as high as the rest. And those three things are just the tip of the iceberg.
D: Managing the daily tasks of appointments and school schedules and dance and swim and early intervention and preparing meals and tidying up the house.
E: Being a wife who is kind and good and grateful amidst all of this.
When I meet one set of needs well, it means I am letting another set or two or three slip, and I scramble to pick up all the pieces. Or I throw my hands up and cry a pile of tears into the muddle of dirty wash carpeting my basement floor. I am sure we all feel this way some days, feel the weight and grind and exhaustion of everyday life challenges and wish it could all be different. That night, I was convinced that someone else, anyone else, would be far better suited for the job of raising these three kids than me. I rattled off the litany of woes to Mark when he came home from a meeting and, expecting his wife, instead stumbled upon a bedraggled woman in a soggy bathrobe standing in the stinky socks. Oh boy.
A hug and a pep talk later, I was reminded that a handful of mistakes and missteps does not a bad mother make. I was reminded that the work is indeed hard and the hours are certainly long. It's OK to cry. It's OK to sense the weakness inherent in the frailty of our character. It's OK to lean on one another when one finds herself knee deep in laundry on a Thursday night with no sign of a clear path out. The path never is crystal clear, and that is just the state of things. So which perspective do I choose to embrace? The one that proclaims my inadequacies and failures from the rooftops, or the one that knows I already have all I need to travel this road. And this morning my Bible study leader reminded us in our study of Colossians: As we toil, we can depend on His strength to enable us. We already have all we need. It's already been given. And the beauty of our faith walk is not in the act of our first belief, but in the journey it begins for us--a journey with twists and turns, mountains and valleys that reveals to us the depth and magnitude and beauty of a thing called grace.
I take a deep breath and dive in with a fresher outlook, knowing I will find myself in that unsorted, stinky pile of wash again, knowing there will be days and probably more tears, but counting on love, counting on grace.
A good friend of mine once reminded me that, "far less competent people than we have raised great kids!" That one keeps me going sometimes!
ReplyDeleteHaha! Love it!
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