A Repeat Battle

It's not one of my better days.

A couple of days ago I sat with some friends who also have young children at home and listened to them lament the messiness of their houses and how no matter how hard they work their houses are just a disaster.  Now I agree with the sentiment one hundred percent-- it doesn't matter if I spend all day scrubbing and picking up clutter, my house is still a disaster-- but I was sitting in the spotless kitchen of one of them.  My kitchen has not been that clean since the first week we moved into our brand new house.  They complained of dog prints and little handprints on their sliding doors, scrubbed walls  that kids mess up immediately after, and boy, I can relate.  But when I hear other women complain about how messy their houses are, and I can see with my own eyes that I would have to hire a professional cleaning crew just to reach their standard of "messy," I get a little discouraged.

Let's face it, I'm only a mediocre housekeeper, and when you throw five kids and a husband into the mix (especially when none of the kids or husband is a neat freak), my house is always going to be in a state of partial disaster.  It's not even so much the clutter as the permanently sticky doors and stained walls (and don't even get me started on the state of the floors or the windows).  I do manage to get the bare minimum done-- we have clean laundry, clean dishes (most days), and the trash gets taken out.  I do the best to weed out stuff so that we don't end up as hoarder central.  But someone who spends as much time reading and writing and working out as I do simply cannot spend oodles of time on housework.  That's the reality of it.  Most of the time I don't fret about it, but sometimes that nasty bug called comparison rears its head and nips me.  I'm writing now in hopes of squeezing the poison back out of the wound before it ruins my day. 

It's not the end of the world if I don't live in a pristine house.  It's really not.  My kids are healthy and happy, and nobody is inspecting us and threatening to throw us out of the house.  I don't need to be ashamed of what my house looks like.  

There it is.  The nasty bug's poison.  It's shame.

Somewhere in my head I have this implanted list of things I have to do to be a good wife and mother, or at the very least I need to manage to keep myself from that dubious category of "white trash."  (How is it that negative stereotype got planted into my head so strongly?)  When I fall short of those imaginary requirements, the shame is powerful.  It's a terribly debilitating force when mixed up with PMS.  Anyway, one of those requirements has to do with my house being clean, neat, and well-maintained.  In reality I can't manage it though.  I can't afford someone else to clean it, and I can't keep it up to my mental standards.  And then part of me wants to cringe and curl up into fetal position.

I refuse to let shame win.

My home is still a refuge for my family.  I have a lot of talents even if housekeeping is not one of them.  And someday (probably when the kids are older) I might even catch up.  But if I don't, my life is not over.

Success in life is not measured by meeting some completely imaginary standard of "responsible" and "respectable."  It's measured by love and service and putting my life in God's hands and seeing what He can help me make of it.  I just need to focus on that and go on with my day.