Trying Again

Do any of you find yourselves making list after list of projects, dreams, intentions, "to-do" missives, etc. with the "If, then" stipulation attached? When this happens, this will get done. If this is complete, then I can do....

Yeah. And of course those projects rarely all get completed. And the conditions are never quite met. But we make ourselves crazy sometimes thinking those perfectionist thoughts. I'm terrible about this. I have this sense of order that makes me think these thoughts almost constantly - and what it boils down to honestly, with me and I'm sure a lot of us, is that if we can just achieve "blank", THEN we will be happy. Even if we don't specifically name it "happiness," that's what we're striving for. And that's completely wrong. I know that happiness, contentment, and joy can be found in Christ alone, and that we are to be content no matter the circumstances. I know that I will never find true happiness in all these other things, even if I got every single tiny thing on every single "to-do" list in my head completed and checked-off. Even so, knowing this in my heart, it's still difficult to convince my brain of this, and so I strive. And we all do sometimes, subconsciously, because we're human. But anyway, that's where I've been.

Of course, as a wife and mom and employee there are things that really do have to get done - dishes pile up and laundry accumulates and babies outgrow clothing and so forth. So I've been trying to catch up on the necessary things and maybe to get a little beyond the necessary. I get a lot of inspiration from blogs that I read (more on this later) about some of those projects that I want to do (maybe healthy inspiration, sometimes maybe not) but I realized that I was spending way too much time just looking at the ideas. So I needed to take an internet hiatus to try to tip the scale back in the direction of action. Basically, I needed to get off my tail, out of the desk chair, and actually DO some things in my house/life/etc. rather than just thinking about what I wanted to be happening. I guess in all that striving for "happiness" there comes a point too where I get overwhelmed and sit and think about it rather than putting anything into motion. I can sit for hours and look at pictures of paint colors and decorations for the baby's room, but if I never get up and put the paint on the walls and decorate, then what good does it do?

The most difficult lesson, of course, is learning to be content if the paint never gets to the wall and the decorations never get put up, AND learning to be content if they do. Remembering where my happiness truly comes from, and remembering that being a perfect housewife does not add any more days to my life or give me any more true value, that's the hard part. Thank goodness I do not have to fix all that on my own.

On a lighter note, Liam is 9 months old today. And crawling. And cruising. And saying "bye-bye" with a little wave. And cutting his 6th and 7th teeth. And definitely NOT sleeping well, hopefully due to those pesky little incisors. Possibly, a video of baby hilarity is coming soon. Until then, a naked baby on the run for your amusement.