SISTER WISDOM

So I am thinking about what I want most in life. It’s an easy list to make.

• as much time as I can get with my husband
• healthy, happy, creative, well-trained children
• organized, comfortable, hospitable home
• creative, fulfilling work/ministry like writing & worship, with growth and progress

Simple. Short list. But lofty goals. These goals require a lot of work. Daily, steady work, discipline, and sometimes intense effort.

All of which would be no problem if I weren’t lazy…

But I am.

Holidays and weekends get me, especially, because I want to sleep late, sit around, have uninterrupted hours to do all the things I don’t have time for… Instead I find that, strangely enough, even on weekends and holidays I am still the wife, mom, and the one in charge of running the house.

(Why didn’t anybody tell me about this “no days off” clause? Where was that in the fine print?)

So I’m still making meals, wiping noses, giving baths, giving instructions, cleaning up messes, enforcing the rules, trying to remember what the rules are, folding the laundry, sweeping the floor… And resenting it because, darn it, no matter how much I try to pretend that I am a naturally industrious, organized, perfect person, I’m not.

I’m a naturally lazy, disorganized, procrastinating, distracted, selfish person. Which means that this ongoing work of wife, mom, homemaker, writer, worshiper is going to require something like a complete transformation.

Ech. That sounds like a lot of work.

“Whatever you do, do it with all your might –Work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now. The old proverb is full of truth and meaning, “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.” Many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbor remains poor for life, because he only half does it. Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business.”
-P.T. Barnum