This weekend I was talking to my sister in law who: is going through the adoption of my precious baby nephew…and she has a bad cold…and she’s taking care of my precious baby nephew…
(She’s doing an awesome job of being a mommy, I might add.)
When I asked her what she was doing for the weekend, she said, “Oh, I need to…my house is…well, my home is not really a haven right now.” (Hey, at least she’s been taking time to read my blog!)
She told me about the piles of this and the stacks of that and all the things that she was having a hard time getting around to.
And then she told me of a dream she had recently had (when she was actually able to get more than two hours of sleep in one chunk):
“I dreamed that I was living in a tree house all by myself with no one to take care of and no one even knew where I was…and I STILL couldn’t get everything done!”
Ooooohhh doesn’t that dream paint a great picture of what we all feel as women at one point or another! Especially if you have a newborn!
So my encouragement to all mothers and homemakers out there is to just keep on keepin’ on…
Making our homes a haven is a WORK IN PROGRESS.
The work never ends. And that can feel discouraging.
We can catch up on all the laundry, and that night, everyone takes off their dirty clothes and there is more laundry to be done and you don’t feel caught up anymore.
Toys that have been picked up get back out again. Dishes that have been washed get dirty again. Mail that has been sorted through begins to pile up again.
In about five minutes.
You can choose to do one of two things: feel discouraged and throw up your hands…or dig in again and start going through the mail.
And you can remember that you aren’t alone. And that just because your house isn’t perfect all the time (or ever), you aren’t a failure as a homemaker.
Just do what you can with the time that you have and don’t give up. It’s amazing what you can pick up, clean up or throw out in a five minute time period. (Aren’t you glad I stopped that pattern and didn’t say “throw up”!)
God bless you as you make your home a haven…remembering that it is a work in progress.
More “Make your home a haven” ideas at Biblical Womanhood.