everything's the worst

i spent most of monday, after a disappointing and difficult weekend, raging against the machine that is my life. monday is the day seth and i do various errands and go to walmart to get groceries for the week. the amount of time and energy this seemingly simple task takes is absolutely obscene, especially when you are dealing with a four-year-old who is on steroids for medical purposes. i felt like my whole morning was shot; that, in fact, the entire world was conspiring against me to keep me from doing the things that i really wanted to do by keeping me busy with endless, inconsequential tasks, like getting groceries for my family so we have food to eat and cleaning my home so that we don't live in a complete pig sty and doing laundry so my children will have clean clothes to wear. I was all but shaking my fist at the sky.

i finally wore myself out, and in my worn out state, i was able to get a tiny bit of clarity. clearly, something else was going on.

i'm realizing that i've been over-extending, over-committing myself these past couple of months. you may know this about me, but i am not a person who thrives on lots of activity and social events. i thrive on simplicity, and i have lost my way this fall.

it's amazing how often i fall victim to the lie that to be a valued member of society (and--dare i say it--the church), one has to step onto the hamster wheel of endless activity. especially since i'm a stay-at-home mom. i mean, really, what else do i have to do? aren't my days full of lying on the couch and eating bon bons? and i did think when wyatt started kindergarten this fall and seth started back to preschool three mornings a week that wow! i have so much time now! not so, my friend. not so.

i will spare you further details of my angst. this i know: i want to live with simplicity. i want to remember that it is a sacred thing to create meals for my family, to wash their clothes, to make the beds. it is a sacred thing to carve out time and space to play with my children rather than toss them the scraps of my attention. it is a sacred thing to have energy to give to my husband and to nurture our relationship. it's okay--and necessary!--to take the time to nurture my own inner life, by which i mean my spiritual life.

As Anne Lamott writes, "'no' is a complete sentence." i'm going to start saying it more.