Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Halfway/ All the Way

Today my hormones are all over the place. I am a mess of teary-ness and snappy-ness and a little mean-ness. I am a hot mess, by all accounts. I have barred myself in my bedroom with salty snacks and soda and I am writing from a place of tornado-ish feelings.

I am unsettled in my soul. I am feeling as if I don't know how to do anything well. Oh I can do anything halfway good. I can halfway clean before getting called away. I can halfway play with the kids before I need to make dinner. I can halfway talk to my husband before real life intrudes. But I can't do anything ALL the way, because I am constantly having to help others do their stuff all the way.

I know this makes very little sense.

Or maybe it does, to you. Maybe you are in this inbetween space of having to do most things halfway in order to do things all the way for your kids. Maybe you are sitting in a cluttered dirty house, but your baby is well fed and nestled to your neck for a nap. Maybe you are in the midst of unpacking from a trip and have 3000 loads of laundry to do. Maybe you are just overwhelmed for no reason, like me.

I am restless in my skin. I am wanting to be so much more than I am now. More than a housewife and a mom. More than just this person in this skin. More. But this is not the season of my life for that. This is the season of caring for others, giving over to others my all...even if it means I am lost a bit in the meantime.

These days won't last forever. There will soon ebe a time of no diapers, no endless cooking/cleaning up/cooking. They will not seek me just when I sit down. They will not seek me at all, in time.

So Lord, let me be content to set aside myself. Set aside my chores and need for control. Let me be with them in this moment when their cheeks are sweet with the smell of sunshine, when their hair smells of baby shampoo. Let me watch as they light up when they are chased, as they giggle so hard they fall down.

Let me be a halfway cook, housecleaner, laundress. Let me be halfway in the things that don't matter and won't change with time. But Lord please let me be an all the way mom and wife, right here, right now. While it counts.