Keep It Simple, Sweetheart: Thoughts from the front line in the battle against entropy
Listen to Yourself Complain (KISS #2)
As
a young mom and a pretty freshly minted keeper of my own home, I did
the best I knew how. But there are things about keeping house beyond the
chores that I wish I had understood. In writing this article and any
future articles, I will keep my younger self in my mind's eye and try to
think of what I might say to her. These are the shoes I walked in.
Oh Dear Me,
You are so overwhelmed. Like Martha you
complain to Jesus. Why doesn't Mary help me? She is doing the better
thing, he tells you. Martha, do you even hear yourself? Nikki, do you
even hear what you are saying?
Listen to
your own words. More often than not, the answers lie in the problems
themselves. You just have to be still and listen and give these cares to
God. That sounds all well and good you say, and I know that's what you
would say because that's exactly what you wrote in your blog, younger
me. Some dear soul told you God would meet your needs and your sleep
deprived self said it would be awfully nice if God would change diapers.
I doubt He was hurt so don't feel badly. He understood your struggle
and your weakness.
Often you are just
complaining not even just to hear yourself, but to make yourself heard
by others. If you would complain purposely to hear yourself, you would
not, as you fear, feel ashamed that you aren't enough. Because you will
never be enough, and that's just the human condition. But if you listen
to yourself with compassion, like you would hear your friend, you might
see through the problem. You will either find inroads to a solution or
make peace with the situation as it is.
What do I mean by purposely hear yourself complain? Maybe you say things like:
"It's as if the dishes never end! I work at this sink for hours and hours and the pile is just as high!"
"Every
time I need to get my bread machine down, it's too high for me, the
counter is not clear, and I can't find my machine recipes anyway."
"I can never make it to the post office before it closes so I'm always failing to mail stuff before the deadline."
"I
can't find anything to wear! How can I have armloads of clothing to
shuffle and feel like it's impossible to wrap my flesh in something that
looks even half decent and I don't hate wearing?"
"My desk
is always covered in piles of paper and I can't see what needs done.
It's been so bad for so long I don't even see it any more, really. It's
like visual background noise that's driving me insane! I can't tell
what's important from what isn't!"
"The bathroom is always disgusting and i'm the only person who cares or knows what to do about it and I can't keep up with it."
"I HATE folding socks."
"People
are just dumping their clean laundry all over the floor and walking on
it and I'm rewashing things that were never actually worn on a person!
Again and again!"
"I feel like I can never get anywhere on
time. Having somewhere to go fills me with dread, just because of what's
involved getting everyone in the car."
"My space is so tight, I can barely move through it. I hate my house/ apartment. I need a bigger one for all this stuff."
"I never have any time for the things I want to do. I can't even meet anyone's basic needs. I disappoint people everyday."
"There's little junk everywhere. I don't even know where it comes from."
"I can never find what I'm looking for. Half of our school morning is just looking for a book or a pencil."
And on and on and on. LISTEN. Don't deny these complaints. They are pure gold. They are the keys themselves.
One
of your first memorable victories against these seemingly impossible
problems will involve postage stamps. I kid you not. Here's what you
will do. Month after month, your brilliant and amazing husband who
doesn't want to do the bills paperless (and you don't want to do the
bills at all so you're not really complaining about his choice) will
want stamps. He will run out of them. You will not have any, he will be
kind of frantic about it and the landlady will get a bit grouchy because
he couldn't get to the post office in a timely manner when the check
was remembered at the last minute. All for the want of a nail.
For want
of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
And then one day as you are buying the stamps, it will strike you,
this ah-ha moment. You will spring for a second book of stamps that one time. You will secret it away in your checkbook, and give the other to your dashing husband.
And
next time the stamps run out you will say, "Oh no, they're not gone.
Here you are." and you will reach into your pocketbook and hand him
those stamps and he will stand there, that brilliant engineer, amazed by
your forethought, and a little light will come on inside of your own
grey matter and you will realize that instead of waiting for
catastrophe, you can replenish the second book of stamps in your
checkbook at your leisure next time you're about in the world during
business hours (or at the grocery checkout line in your PJs running in
for diapers. Oh wait, this will apply to the diaper panic too!)
The
answer was there all along. All you had to do was hear yourself. We're
late with the bills. Why? One reason is because we run out of stamps.
Why? Because I can't get them the moment we run out. We have little kids
and I can't leave the house easily.... Get them before you run out-
How? Create a small buffer.
Ask yourself questions and let your panicked self be heard by your rational self. Trust me, there is a rational you in there.
The
day you solve the problem with the stamps, you will look around at all
of your problems in a new light. You've just become a Project Manager of
your home. You will start to get an inkling of things as a string of
preconditions, possible outcomes, costs and risks and benefits. And it's
actually not as dry as it sounds. It's actually kind of like you just
gained a psychic super power. You can tell the future and you can change it.
So
pick a little problem, something that really is a trouble maker,
something that's really a thorn in your life. Ask your self a few "why"
questions about it and pray about it. Hear your own panic or your own
defeated voice and honor it, give it some respect. Your problem is real,
and when you hear it, you will see through it to the missing piece.
Sometimes, there is no solution. And with prayer, you can make
peace with most of these things too. We do not have a garage. So
anything that I ask myself a series of whys about and come to the
conclusion that having a garage would solve that problem, I know that's
not an affordable solution at this time in my life. It makes more sense
to pay for car repairs than to try to facilitate them ourselves. You
can't save money on car repairs if you have no place for the tools
required. It makes more sense to just borrow a ladder to clean the
gutters (much of a hassle as it is to ask and to transport it) than to
have the cost of tens of thousands just to make a place to keep one.
Sometimes the solution is to accept the situation and not have something
the ideal way. And that's just fine too. Once you accept it you can
move on. It won't niggle at your brain anymore and you can be free of
it.
Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus and Martha,
you can join her there too. You can rest your weary soul. Just give him
your cares and your troubles and be still. Either the answer will come
in the considering, or you will be free to accept what is your portion
for this season.
We'll talk again soon.
KISS ~n<3
