It's been easy for me to get side tracked these days. You see, we are sick in this house right now. So my house is a wreck and the kids are a bit of a wreck. Christian's seasonal job is winding down, and there are no jobs on the horizon (not for lack of trying, I promise you). I have found a routine with schooling and housework, but it takes every bit of my strength to get through simple things that used to bring joy and almost be relaxing. (I cannot explain how much I used to love to chop vegetables and fruit. It was so soothing to just pull out bags of produce and chop them into little well ordered Tupperware ready for my family to grab and eat. Now chopping hurts and is a struggle so it consumes quite a bit of energy. So, that means less time for reaching out, for making friendships happen in a new place. It's hard to make friends when you're just trying to stay afloat in the everyday of life. Although I have been going to my church's women's bible study on Mondays...so I am trying I promise ). But it's easy to get caught up in just plain how much pain I am in. It's so hard some days to see anything else when the pain makes you bite your lip with every movement.
Now, I know that there aren't a lot of you out there with my exact issues. So many of you have many more complicated things that you're going through. Some of you are caught like deer in the head lights of the semi-tractor trailer that is infancy-toddlerhood in your home. I get that too. For reals. But I think wether you're like a sweet friend of mine who is facing her daughters cancer diagnosis, like me with some limitations that you're not super stoked on, or just caught up the wheelhouse of life that keeps moving without really showing it's purpose, I feel like I'm supposed to tell you this:
TODAY MATTERS
It's too easy to think it doesn't.
When my babies were little and I was wading through the fog of sleeplessness combined with post parthum depression and my husbands insane work schedule, I remember just felling the pointlessness of it all. I loved my babies, truly. But some days were just full wow, as soon as I change that diaper, he is going to fill it again. As soon as I feed them, I'll need to clean it up and after I do that, it will be time to make a healthy snack, and then I'll need to sit and feed it to them, and then I'll need to clean it up, and then it will be time to start dinner! There were days when my life felt like a much less colorful version of the book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie..." Maybe I should have added cookies to my day. Duly noted. For those of you out there currently in this fog, go get a cookie. Get a cookie, and remember that TODAY MATTERS. That day, the one where we changed four times because of food or puke or other dried on revelations found running down our clothing but never actually got dressed because the change was just into new pajamas. That one where everyone took turns throwing up. That one day when nothing exciting happened and it was just a series of nose wipes, tooshy wipes, and face wipes that crescendoed into a swirl of tears and howling just before the silence of everyone passed out for the night.
That day when you wanted to give up, but you DIDNT. That's the day I'm talking about. THAT ONE MATTERS.
Because without those seemingly insignificant days, my kids wouldn't have grown up into who they are. Because without the days of wiping tooshies and noses, we could not have come to the days of my kids sharing their faith. When Seth boldly told his bestie that Jesus loves him, yeah THAT day couldn't have happened without the many days that seemed to blur together in his infancy.
For me, for this season of my life, the struggle has been, what's the point?
Everything I do is still not enough to get done with everything on my list for the day.
And I have pared down my list and talked my list over with Jesus. I'm not trying to do too much. Dinner on the table and toilets that are clean and just the basics are still so hard for me to do and I just plain do NOT get it all done everyday. So there's this piece of me that says why am I even trying? (I'm just being honest) And the answer that Jesus is speaking to me is this: BECAUSE TODAY MATTERS. That day when I realized no one cleaned the bathrooms last week and I just plain couldn't because my neck hurt. That day when the Fridge was full of food but I was not full of energy to make it jump into a pot and become more than ingredients. That day when the pain was so bad that my biggest accomplishment was to stop crying and get out of bed. That day when I walked outside and realized I killed all my plants by forgetting to water them. For a week. THAT DAY MATTERS. Because those days roll in to each other and lead us into the ones where your daughter talks to you about how she FEELS during a worship service or tells you how thankful she is that Jesus died for her. Because those days lead into the ones where your son says teach me to play guitar because I keep writing songs about how much I love The Lord and I want to play them. Without the days that I crawled through broken and bleeding , I could not have come to the triumph of those moments!!! Am I even making sense here? I guess what I'm saying here is that even if today genuinely stinks, it is still a bridge to tomorrow and to the next day and we just don't know what beautiful things we have awaiting us. The beauty WILL be there. We can't grow weary in well doing because Jesus promises us that we WILL reap a reward if we don't lose heart. So I guess I'm saying don't lose heart. And I took a long time to do so. Sorry about that.
Maybe you're not in the fog of little ones or the haze of poor health or chronic pain. Maybe it's just the monotony of the everyday that just seems to wear us down. The same job, the same breakfast routine, the same reaction from your family that seems to not think much of you, the same elderly parent dying, the same sad SAMENESS of the everyday. Maybe you're right there with me when I say it feels like I will never accomplish everything I am supposed to each day!
It can seem monotonous. But it is just a piece of the beautiful life puzzle that we are each given. All the pieces matter and they are all necessary.
This is NOT meant to be a guilt trip. Yes, you should try to find the beauty in each day and God has made each one so it does have beauty. But sometimes, we just stink. And so our day seems to stink. Or week or year or what have you.
HOWEVER, the day matters wether you did "well" or not. It matters simply because you survived. I am not here on a soapbox telling you to make the best of today because it matters. That is backwards to what I'm thinking here. I am here telling you that because today matters you have purpose. Your life holds meaning, even in the minutiae.
So because today is not pointless, tomorrow isn't either. And today and tomorrow and a thousand more tomorrow's will roll into each other and build into a towering mountain of beauty that is life. When we get to the end, we will be able to see it. I just think that knowing it now, even though we can't see it, might help us to enjoy the ride.
Some days you end up at a magical park...
