Modify if You Need To!

Future laundry loads litter the floor. The smell of breakfast dishes lingers in the air. Dinner needs to be started. The floor needs to be swept; the counters wiped down. As I add one more errand to the white board list I feel it all pressing in around me. Some days I feel like I could drown in the needs of my own house.

I battle with feeling like a terrible house keeper with papers and art projects scattered around me. I spend my afternoon hours writing and talking with a friend and now I have no more time left to clean up the house before my husband walks in. He must cringe when he comes home.

I haven't mentioned yet the school work on the schedule for today. But as I look at the whiteboard list of reminders, it looks like today instead of the books I had planned, we will learn how to run errands. Maybe we could practice doing that joyfully, except that would mean I would need to lead the procession. Hmmm, maybe we could draw a map of our route? I feel my task windows are about to run out of “new tabs”. Instead I just scream...

HOW DO I FIT IT ALL IN???

I don’t.

I can’t.

The words of the P90X instructor washed over me one night as Adam and I were putting up dishes after the kids went to bed –

“Do the best you can with good form…modify, modify, modify.”

I don’t have a housekeeper or a nanny or a teenage daughter. I have me and a houseful of jubilant, scattered, but willing young souls who need to be loved, taught, extended grace to, fed and clothed – DAILY!

I am not perfect. Nor can I be good at all things in life. I lose my temper, make mistakes, drop things, forget things, buy the wrong things – DAILY!

Taking all these things into consideration I get this verdict: I need Grace – God’s Grace and grace from myself. And, my kids being imperfect people too (newsflash Julie!), need the same thing.

All I can do is the “Best I can do with good form”. And modify until I get there. To me, “good form” means with joy and a good attitude, without feeling continually burdened by my self inflicted “to –do list”. It’s like we just rush through it all to get to the next thing to then rush through it to get to the next thing again and again.

I feel like life is full of modifications! I have been known to rearrange the furniture 10 times if I need to until it works. I've rearranged kid's bedrooms to accommodate for a baby, a school room, an office, and a play room. Some days I need to move the couch this way to accommodate for a crowd coming over. Other days, I need to add a leaf and some chairs to the table and scoot the rocking chair over there by the corner. I do it freely with the furniture, why do I feel like a failure once again when I need to re-work how we do something or where we do it? My husband shared this to his Team Members last week, that encouraged me:

"We can compete at a high level with joy. We can compete under a ton of stress and still have joy. It doesn't have to be a trade off. We will rob our own joy from our selves. No one's going to take it from us. It's our choice."

So I'm committing to simplify until I find my joy for where I am. Maybe that means leaving something undone for the moment…or till next week! Maybe that means taking care of something now, because it’s easy and will be one less thing for tomorrow.

Dear mom, homeschooler, stay-at-home mommy, worker, Dad, business man/woman, teacher, and everyone in-between –

Do the best you can with good form! Modify if you need to! 

May Casting Crown's song "Spirit Wind" encourage us be the people God's created us to be regardless of the mess around us!!

Putting it In Our Own Words,

~Julie