What Comes First
Well, oddly enough, I think we may have come through with this latest bout of the stomach flu only attacking the female half of the family. Though all of us girls came down with it last weekend at one point or another, Terence and J and K all seemed to escape it. Weird, but I'm not complaining!!
It's taken me most of the week to recover around the house though. You know how it goes: Mom gets sick and the house falls to pieces. It could have been worse-- as soon as I started feeling under the weather, I attacked the kitchen like a crazy person. So when the flu hit me full force, at least we were starting from a point where there were plenty of clean dishes!
This weekend I spent a long block of time cleaning my bedroom. Anytime my life gets busy (which, let's face it, is most of the time) my bedroom is the room that gets the least attention. I'm barely ever in there except to sleep, and during most of my cleaning time, Terence is sleeping in it. But it tends to get crazy cluttered-- Terence and I often end up just dumping stuff in there to get it out of the way, and sometimes the little rugrats pull everything apart looking for goodies or something else that I may have hidden. And cleaning my own room falls way down the priority list because in general, nobody ever sees it. (Having piano students over three days a week means that I at least try to keep up with the living room.)
Needless to say, the amount of work my room needed on Saturday was quite heavy. It took an especially long time because I decided to tackle my dresser drawers and the bookshelves as well. (Both overflowing and LONG in need of decluttering.) In the end, I filled up a large garbage bag with trash and came up with another two bags destined for Goodwill. I ran out of time before I finished (some more decluttering needed-- oh, and at some point I need to do something about the boxes of Christmas stuff still stacked in front of my window), but with the room dusted and vacuumed, it was a glorious haven from the perpetual chaos in the rest of the house.
It occurred to me though that my bedroom is symbolic of some other areas of my life. When I have a clean, clutter-free, pretty bedroom, I feel more rested and happy and calm. There is somewhere in my house that I can take a mental and emotional break from the chaos that comes with living with a large brood of young children. Yet where is my room on the priority list? At the bottom. Heck, my bedroom and bathroom haven't even been painted yet, though every room in the house has been done at least once (and sometimes more than once). Every other room comes first.
How often do I do this in other areas in my life? Put myself last, that is? Focus only on the parts of my life that other people see and not on what will give me the deep inner peace that I need? Put my husband and children first because that is what a mom is supposed to do-- even if, as my mom put it the other day, I should be putting on my own oxygen mask before I try to put one on my kids.
There are two things that I feel I desperately lack to be able to best meet the needs of my family and others in my life. One is a better personal connection to my Father in Heaven. He understands me best, and He is the one who can help me meet all the challenges that come my way. The other thing is a much higher level of patience-- with my children, my husband, and even myself. On a practical level, I drastically need to be able to control my temper better.
But what efforts have I been making to improve these two areas of my life? Though they would make everything so much better all around, I tend to move them down the list. I'm busy with stuff that "has" to be done first. The day to day list of things that people expect of me-- I don't want to let them down, you see. I don't want to be embarrassed or shamed because I fell through on my end of something I was supposed to do, whether it be the laundry or the kids' school projects or my responsibilities at church. So my day fills up with all these things and I just don't make enough time or room for those two areas which should come first.
Time to reorder my priorities. Yes, I think I really should clean my room regularly so that I have a personal little retreat. But most of all, I need to take time out every day for working on those two areas which have the potential to do so much good for me-- patiently controlling my temper and developing my personal relationship with Heavenly Father. Sometimes putting myself first is not such a bad thing!
It's taken me most of the week to recover around the house though. You know how it goes: Mom gets sick and the house falls to pieces. It could have been worse-- as soon as I started feeling under the weather, I attacked the kitchen like a crazy person. So when the flu hit me full force, at least we were starting from a point where there were plenty of clean dishes!
This weekend I spent a long block of time cleaning my bedroom. Anytime my life gets busy (which, let's face it, is most of the time) my bedroom is the room that gets the least attention. I'm barely ever in there except to sleep, and during most of my cleaning time, Terence is sleeping in it. But it tends to get crazy cluttered-- Terence and I often end up just dumping stuff in there to get it out of the way, and sometimes the little rugrats pull everything apart looking for goodies or something else that I may have hidden. And cleaning my own room falls way down the priority list because in general, nobody ever sees it. (Having piano students over three days a week means that I at least try to keep up with the living room.)
Needless to say, the amount of work my room needed on Saturday was quite heavy. It took an especially long time because I decided to tackle my dresser drawers and the bookshelves as well. (Both overflowing and LONG in need of decluttering.) In the end, I filled up a large garbage bag with trash and came up with another two bags destined for Goodwill. I ran out of time before I finished (some more decluttering needed-- oh, and at some point I need to do something about the boxes of Christmas stuff still stacked in front of my window), but with the room dusted and vacuumed, it was a glorious haven from the perpetual chaos in the rest of the house.
It occurred to me though that my bedroom is symbolic of some other areas of my life. When I have a clean, clutter-free, pretty bedroom, I feel more rested and happy and calm. There is somewhere in my house that I can take a mental and emotional break from the chaos that comes with living with a large brood of young children. Yet where is my room on the priority list? At the bottom. Heck, my bedroom and bathroom haven't even been painted yet, though every room in the house has been done at least once (and sometimes more than once). Every other room comes first.
How often do I do this in other areas in my life? Put myself last, that is? Focus only on the parts of my life that other people see and not on what will give me the deep inner peace that I need? Put my husband and children first because that is what a mom is supposed to do-- even if, as my mom put it the other day, I should be putting on my own oxygen mask before I try to put one on my kids.
There are two things that I feel I desperately lack to be able to best meet the needs of my family and others in my life. One is a better personal connection to my Father in Heaven. He understands me best, and He is the one who can help me meet all the challenges that come my way. The other thing is a much higher level of patience-- with my children, my husband, and even myself. On a practical level, I drastically need to be able to control my temper better.
But what efforts have I been making to improve these two areas of my life? Though they would make everything so much better all around, I tend to move them down the list. I'm busy with stuff that "has" to be done first. The day to day list of things that people expect of me-- I don't want to let them down, you see. I don't want to be embarrassed or shamed because I fell through on my end of something I was supposed to do, whether it be the laundry or the kids' school projects or my responsibilities at church. So my day fills up with all these things and I just don't make enough time or room for those two areas which should come first.
Time to reorder my priorities. Yes, I think I really should clean my room regularly so that I have a personal little retreat. But most of all, I need to take time out every day for working on those two areas which have the potential to do so much good for me-- patiently controlling my temper and developing my personal relationship with Heavenly Father. Sometimes putting myself first is not such a bad thing!
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