Whenever there’s something big to do in my life, I usually look for a bigger project that is more immediate.
Like when we were expecting Paul and found out he would need heart surgery and have Down Syndrome, I volunteered to run the Fall Carnival at our kids’ school. My eldest holds it over my head that at one point, I asked if I should coach my younger son’s baseball team. (I was five months pregnant at the time). He looked at me and said, “Are you completely crazy?” I didn’t volunteer but still think it would have been fun.
This weekend, grading, editing, and cleaning what we’ve put off loom on my to do list. So of course, I’m blogging instead. I tried pulling my “It’s Mother’s Day” Weekend card –why limit yourself to a day for this task. The kids remained sticklers for “It’s tomorrow,” so deep cleaning the house gets put on Sunday.
It’s a rainy weekend. Admittedly that bums me out. I’d managed to get my fit bit over 10,000 steps Thursday and Friday…and any setbacks usually take me about a week to recover. Writing out the list, the thousand nags threaten to crowd out my brain. Seeing them next to a number makes it seem possible. Three of the chores I don’t want to do, so I usually pick the worst first. My brain starts grouping, what can be tackled while another is being done, (phone calls while driving to the dry cleaner, pharmacy, farm, etc).
Success from yesterday nags on the not dones of today…scheduled five physicals, need to take on the dentist and get all those over eighteen to add to their get it done list, making appointments. For a generation raised with cell phones, none of them like using them for their original intent, to talk to people. I’m amused that they need these gentle jabs to act.
Number nine is “Pray,” and as I look at the list, I remember the goal isn’t to multi-task everything, but to make everything what it should be. Prayer is a conversation with God, heart to heart, so while it can happen anywhere, it requires my full attention. I know if I try to sprinkle it in between items, it will be casual, off hand, and likely prefunctory until it isn’t. I look at the list again.
Choose the better portion first is the jab from the Holy Spirit. “Put the list down Sherry,” and “stop looking for the right time or right way, and just pray.” Letting me procrastinate by writing until I write myself into the spot where I’m listening rather than just amusing myself; it’s the third person of the Trinity’s way of cleaning the interior room of my soul and reprioritizing my list. I’ve been given a soul that I use almost every way but how it was intended. I hope the Holy Spirit is as amused with me as I was with my children.
So go enjoy this Saturday, get done what you need to do. However, make sure before you carpe diem, you spend some time thanking God for all that is, all that was and will be. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you clear your interior room so you can really listen. Do it now, with all your heart.
Oh, and I have a piece over at Catholicmom.com if you want more of my seemingly syssiphean struggle with myself to be still and know He is here: https://www.catholicmom.com/articles/gods-small-whisper-vs.-my-big-mouth.
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