Shew, that was a close one…I almost missed my weekly blog, but it’s just 7:36 pm and there’s still a few hours to spare before the day ends with me falling asleep on the floor of the boys’ bedroom. (What happens most nights when trying to keep Justice in his bed.) As I’m sure you can tell by now, today has not been the ordinary Wednesday for me. But then again, I seem to be saying that a lot lately, so I guess it’d be more accurate to say that I just don’t have ordinary Wednesdays.
What would a normal Wednesday look like for me anyway? It’s hard for me to say any more, which kills me. I thrive when I have a set routine. I feel successful and accomplished and productive when I have lists of items that I can check off as I do them, even if they’re just mental lists. But even though I work best with lists, I find myself getting caught up in all of my daily duties and not taking the time to use them. And why? It would be, or seem to be, so easy to just start the day with collecting my thoughts and organizing them into bullets of what I wish to accomplish that day. Yet, day after day, I find myself being drug out of the bed, either by Jason or any one of the kids, because the day has already begun.
Ideally, I would be getting up somewhere around 5 am, while everyone is still asleep and the house is quiet, to have some time to myself. I would start with Pilates (a morning stretch always feels so good to me), then read my bible and pray, and then have breakfast started by the time everyone else woke up. That really is my goal for the start of every single day, and sometimes, sometimes, it does happen. But when it doesn’t, I try to not to freak out, but just start right where I am. That’s the phrase I have to recite to myself often, “Just start where you are.” When the kids are running around the house begging for cereal and milk, and Jason is rushing to start work, and the dishes didn’t get washed the night before so there aren’t any clean spoons, I have to tell myself to just start with washing the spoons.
I comfort myself with the realization it won’t always be this way. Soon enough, the kids won’t be so dependant on me for such small tasks, and I will miss it. And I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job with giving myself a lot of grace in this area; it’s evident with how often the dishes aren’t washed, and how behind I am with the laundry. But I no longer kill myself to get everything done before I go to bed. Like Scarlett O’Hara, I can “think about that tomorrow.”
Through all of the chaos that comes with raising and homeschooling 3 kids (all 5 and under), and cooking and cleaning and laundry, I have had one constant…Wednesday Morning Watch. It’s a special time of prayer and worship, harp and bowl style, from 7-8 am every Wednesday morning at The Vineyard, and it’s pretty much the highlight of my week, one of them at least - a time for just me to spend in God’s presence. It is saaaa-weeeet. So while my schedule for the rest of the week still needs tweaking, I am consistent with Wednesday mornings…mornings, that is. Which is why that is the time I have committed to my blog, to make sure it actually gets done. So for better or worse, here’s another one for the file.