These last few weeks have been hectic and exhausting. Because school will soon be out, I agreed to work four days last week. In a row. Add that to back to back soccer games that were district finals. One of which started at 8 p.m.. So one late night and one really really late night. And also adds the emotional and mental stress of ending a season and saying goodbye to senior boys. Toss in Derek's grandmother whose health is not good. Which create stress because we worry about her and we worry about what is the best thing for her in terms of where she lives. Oh, and maybe make an offer on a house just for fun. Did I mention I was up 3 times in the middle of the night with sick kids? And since we like to run ourselves ragged, let's start asking some questions about a 14 month old, special needs infant in Haiti. Why not exhaust yourself physicallly, mentally, and emotionally, all at the same time?
The end result is two people who are barely functioning. My laundry pile is crazy. I put a load of towels in the dryer to dry, forgot about them, and then had them not get all the way dry so I had to pull them out and get ready to rewash them. Nevermind that I had a load of laundry in the washer which I had also forgotten about that had sat for a couple of days and needed rewashed. So I had to be content tossing the semi wet towels on the laundry room floor. The kids went to my folks' for the weekeend and I kid you not, my poor son had no clean underwear to take. I tried to hurry and resolve my laundry issue but couldn't get it all done in time so as we were heading out the door to drive to Grand Island, I'm carrying several pairs of wet underwear for him and attempting to drape them over the back seat, hoping they might dry on the way. (At least they were clean.) The dishes are also taking over and our floor is getting to the point of being too gross to walk on with bare feet becauase of all the crusties that stick to your feet. I'm not saying that because I think a clean house is so very very important. It's just representative of being too tired to do much of anything other than get through each day.
On Sunday, our minister Dan preached on parenthood and the one thing that stuck with me was his description of pit stop parenting. That would be the kind of parenting that zooms in and focuses on a task for about 15 second and then hurriedly sends the child on his way. That's a bit how this week has felt. This week was such a good reminder that I can't do it all and there is a reason why I don't want to work full time and run to events after school every night, of why I want to live more simply than a lot of other American families. I'm not being critical of people who do such things, just that for me, it's not a great fit.
Then this morning, Passionate Homemaking had a post entitled, "Why Mothers Need to Pick Their Priorities." She lists many good things like exercise, Bible study, and raising our kids right. But what she says about those good things is important to hear. "When we don’t know who we are, where we are at, and where we are headed we get distracted by all the “important” things….because they are all around us." This last week has been a week full of good and important things but it's also been a week where I'm not sure if I've focused in on what should be most important. I'm looking forward to a quieter, more focused week, to finally getting the sour smelling towels off of my laundry room floor, and using my vacuum cleaner for a major cleaning session but I'm also looking forward to getting back to finding God in a week with a slower pace and to enjoying my kids rather than rushing around from place to place.
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