Well, sort of. See, I am learning that life is not lived in separate blocks of time - "Now I am a mommy. Now I am a missionary. Now I am a housekeeper and homemaker.", but rather as a messy, challenging, glorious, exhilarating mix that makes me a wife, homemaker, mommy, and missionary (among other things) all at the same time.
As such I am learning to bring Him into everything I do rather than waiting for that elusive moment of free time when the baby will be fed and all the chores will be done. When I am nursing Gracie I am thinking about Him and His amazing love for me as my Father. When I am doing housework I am thanking Him for a house to clean and a family to take care of. Even when I (finally) get to take a shower I am telling Him how grateful I am for the small things like hot water and showers and body-wash.
What I'm trying to say is that this is not a blog post about being a mommy - it's a blog post about life.
With that said, how many of you have a schedule? If you have one do you stick to it? How do you feel about yourself when you stick to it? How do you feel about yourself when you don't? For years I was an organized person. I loved my schedule because it was my measuring stick for my personal standard of success. Give me a list, baby, and let me cross those things off one by one - not so much for the purpose of getting things done, but so I can drown myself in gloating and self-satisfaction at the end of the day. I was successful again! Hooray for me!
Of course there was always the downside of raking myself over the coals every time I failed to stay on my schedule. How could I be productive/successful/
I lived my life this way until in my mid twenties I had a revolutionizing enlightenment of grace that practically changed my life on many different levels. Suddenly my success, acceptance and value no longer depended on my performance, including how well or not I stayed on a schedule. God's view of me through the eyes of grace began to seep into my heart, slowly but surely doing away with my old patterns of selfish, self-satisfied or self-deprecating living (all of which, by the way, are rooted in pride) and rejuvenating my relationship with Him in a way I never could have imagined.
Somewhere along the way I threw out my schedule. There were several reasons for doing this, the main one being my old tendency to rely on my schedule for my sense of self worth which went against the truth He was revealing to me and life of grace I was just beginning to learn how to live. Also I wanted everything I did, including my times with Him spent praying and reading the Bible to be born out of love and gratitude for Him and not just so I could check something off my list and feel good about myself. So. No schedule for me! Woo hoo! I'm free!
But then I became a mommy. A stay-at-home mommy for that matter. Suddenly I was surrounded by mountains of things needing to be done and my former free and easy method of living wasn't seeing those mountains getting any smaller! In fact they seemed to be growing to insurmountable heights! I caved and made a house-cleaning schedule. I arranged the major daily, weekly, monthly, and bi-monthly jobs into a nice, neat, Pinterestey format and felt quite proud and accomplished and supremely mom-like surveying the result of my efforts. Maybe now I would get something done around here!
Only to despair the first week of putting it into action. "Oh no! I missed one day because Gracie was fussy and skipped her nap! How will I ever keep up? Now that task will remain undone for another week!" And my inner wailing went on and on. My grand schedule was a failure after all!
Then I had a revelation that knocked my socks off:
I WAS THE MASTER OF MY SCHEDULE and not the other way around! As the creator and implementer of my schedule I had all rights reserved and total freedom to adjust, make changes, or even scrap it completely if it wasn't serving it's purpose of helping me to accomplish my goals of a cleaner and more efficient home. Armed with this new enlightenment I attacked my schedule and made adjustments moving some things around, taking some things off, and creating a "catch-up day" so that if I miss one day for some reason (like fussy Gracie, or a doctor's appointment, or mommy's crashtime/naptime) I can make it up!
And so my love-hate relationship with schedules continues. The key for me is to remember that it is there as a guideline and not as my master or my measuring stick for success. It is to help me to be the wife and mommy that God wants me to be and when it ceases to do that is when I need to either scrap it or revamp it. I also am learning to remind myself daily that my value and worth do not depend on how well I stick to the schedule or even how good of a wife and mommy I am but how much my Father loves me and His grace that covers me in spite of all my faults and failings.
I will say that it felt pretty good to check off "Clean, sweep, and mop kitchen" today! It's ok that I didn't check off yesterday's task for the day because my Gracie needed me. She will only be a baby for so long. Tomorrow is another day!
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