All Is Grace

i’m sitting on the couch this morning. i decided today that since i had to be up early to put the finishing touches on a cake to be delivered before 8 am (by my awesome husband, to his cousin), and since i stayed up until 1 am working on said cake…i would turn on the tv to something other than The Blaze (Fox and Friends. woo. oh, and Eddie Money? no. let it go, Eddie.), let the kids sleep until they woke up (they’re still sleeping), and relax until i just can’t stand it any more.

that relaxing will end the moment i finish this post.

i’m just not good at sitting on the couch without a project. i’m even worse at it when i feel guilty about the fact that i’m not accomplishing something during prime accomplish-something hours. and when Joey has to run around all day helping other people, working his butt off, and i sit here and relax? ugh. an hour of rest…it’s like torture.

because the floor isn’t vacuumed. the table is cluttered. my folded laundry sits in the tote waiting for me to stop ignoring it. i left the dishwasher full and walked out of the kitchen. the dogs need to be fed. yes, all of those chores will wait…but for what?

me to stop sitting on the couch feeling guilty, that’s what.

the ridiculous part of this situation is…it’s during these brief moments of rest that i examine my days. yes, i have days like today, when i can sit on the couch for an hour and read facebook posts, watch pointless television, and ignore the nagging housework…even consider reading a book. but i also have days like yesterday when i work out, spend 2 hours completing and publishing my new cake website, clean the kitchen 3 times, help a kid make pancakes, help another kid build her own website, oversee their school day, do two loads of laundry, bake a cake, frost a cake, make three different dinners, go to worship rehearsal, stop in and visit my parents, put the kids to bed, and work from 10 pm until 1 am making gumpaste flowers and covering the cake in fondant. and there were hundreds of other mundane, mindless things i did during the day i can’t even remember. when i look back on my pre-stay-at-home-mom life when i taught 7-12 grade math and science and had nine preps and a part time job and an apartment to keep…the work looked different, and it wasn’t in my dining room, but my yesterdays definitely compete with those days. last Friday when i spent 16 hours on cakes, flowers, wedding rehearsals, and then Saturday when i caked until the delivery, changed, went directly to the wedding, came home and cleaned the house and prepped the kids for their overnight with their dad…the work looked different, but those days easily compete with my work days outside the home.

but these are the days i feel like all that stuff i do still doesn’t measure up to what “working moms” do every day. i feel lazy. i remember when my kids were little, i got to the end of every day and didn’t remember sitting down. not once. those days i knew i worked hard enough to equal “their” work. days like last Friday and Saturday and yesterday, i know i worked hard enough to equal “their” work. but my days like today seem like…laziness.

does every stay-at-home mom reach this point?

you know what’s crazy about that? how many stay-at-home moms make it to year 15?

i don’t know any. not one.

and i understand that. no one stays home and homeschools through high school. and when they send their kids to school, they go back to work. i get it. i would do the same thing. but i am not there. and i’m watching all of them.

and i’m having a lazy day.

so. i’m on a hunt for another mom of almost-high schoolers who still stays home. i think i should have coffee with her every week for a while. maybe together we can validate what we do.

and maybe i should stop worrying about it, embrace the fact that this is what God has for me, relax into the random lazy days, and press on.

well, at least the “pressing on” part sounds like me.