I was just talking to a friend on Marco Polo who reads this blog. We got into a conversation about one of the major dynamics of being a mom at home with little kids: Doing One Thing at A Time (While Everything Else Unravels.)
Did you know that this is a reality for every mom in the world? I don’t know if we can hear this enough, so I’m here to tell you again. I have often heard some people put it this way: you can’t do it all. I like to say that we can do lots of things, just not usually all at once.
Did you know it’s okay to pick one thing and let the rest go? Sometimes we make sugar cookie solar systems and the rest of the school day goes down the drain. Sometimes we got everyone out the door for a cool, memorable field trip, and now we just need to take a nap and order pizza for dinner! Instead of thinking what a failure we are, we need to give ourselves permission to be finite beings. We can make a conscious decision to do one particular thing well today and allow other things to unravel a little.
When I come up for air after finishing a big task like organizing five years worth of kids’ papers, I am often behind on laundry, out of spoons, and ordering Chic-fil-a. My kids have watched too much TV, and everyone’s fingernails have grown seven inches. That’s what’s going on behind the scenes of my pictures!
By the way, all children (yes, even those who are trained to help with chores) are like snails that leave trails of water cups, shoes, balled up socks, strewn throw-pillows and legos behind them!
One the flip-side, it is sometimes good to take a little inventory and see if what we are prioritizing is really worth the rest of life spiraling. Is activity something that is contributing to my family or taking from it?
The more we practice prioritizing (doing one thing at a time), the easier it gets to have perspective on the part that has to unravel a little. When we make one-thing-at-a-time investments into important things, we can rest knowing that we will see fruit in the long-term.
So you hereby have permission to do one or two things at a time really well, while everything else unravels. Let’s do it with joy and excellence, choosing wisely as a gift and investment into our families.
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