The Choices I Make

I've been thinking a lot lately about the choices I make as a mom.  I feel as though I'm always in triage mode--thousands of things to be done, some of them emergencies, some of them only slightly less urgent, some of them just important.  It often feels as though my children determine the course of my day. I flit from emergency to emergency, always a step behind.  Timmy don't hit your sister!  Ava don't hit him back!  Out of the refrigerator! Don't try to butter your own bread!  Use a spoon to eat your yogurt! Get down from there!  Sit at the table!  Don't color on the walls! Cushions back on the couches!  Often things fall apart all at once, one child with a blown-out diaper, one holding the implement of his sister's destruction, one screaming in pain and anger.  What is the order of operations here? I do not know.

Maybe I'm just bad at this.  So many people seem to handle it better.  I often I feel like people look at me and wonder, "Why can't she hold her stuff together?" Sometimes I look at myself and wonder the same.

I feel busy, overwhelmed much of the time, but I never seem to make much headway.  I clean the kitchen every day, but by the time dinner is done you wouldn't believe that.  I do laundry, but I find getting it folded and put away a nearly impossible task.  I can usually clean up one floor per day; if I attempt more my children get restless and begin to pull things apart more quickly than I can put them back together.  There are plenty of things that need to be done more often than I do them (mopping, cleaning bathrooms, for example).  I feel like I should be able to find time to do them.  But they remain undone.

And those are just the household tasks.  My parenting tasks are far more complex.  I constantly have to say no to one of my children because another child needs me more.  No I can't read another story to you, your brother is screaming.  I have to feed the baby, so you can't sit in my lap. I feel as though I miss so many of those little teachable moments because I'm pulled in three directions constantly.

And so the guilt sets in.  It cripples. It accuses.  When I choose to give my attention to something, I choose to neglect something else.  I have to.  I am finite.  A pastor I respect once noted to his own wife that only God gets His to do list done.  So true. And so, as a mom, I have to remind myself to do the most important things.  A good friend pointed out that, as a mom, you have to rely constantly on the Holy Spirit to know what those things are.

There are things that must be done in order for my family to be cared for and loved practically, and so I do not neglect them.  I make dinner, I do the laundry, I try to provide some semblance of order in our home.  They are important, and some of the many ways I love my family.  But I believe that the work I do shepherding my kids and making them feel secure in my love for them and God's love for them is far more important.  I'm trying to seize those moments when their hearts open up, even though discipline and instruction is exhausting and often inconvenient.  I'm trying to make myself say yes when Ava wants me to read to her, when Timmy wants me to play legos, when Genevieve is smiling and shrieking.  I'm trying to leave the task that I desperately want to finish, and to sit with them, to talk with them.  I'm trying to have fun with them.  I'm trying to say to them by my actions, "You are more important than this task."

I fail constantly.  I don't strike the right balance.  I need grace for that.  I believe that God pours it out, and fills in the gaps that I leave.  I try to preach that gospel to myself, and to be faithful in what I can.