Friday, February 1, 2013
Dear Pinterest,
My husband refers
to you as "SINterest" and I am seeing more and more how you reveal my
lack of contentment. Don’t get me wrong, I love browsing your page, looking at
the endless pictures of perfectly decorated and organized homes, but this is
real life I am living, not Pinterest. This isn't a model home that I work so
hard to organize perfectly and decorate to take a picture of and show people
how awesome life would be if our homes were clean and neat. I will be the first to admit my love for order
and organization, and I do believe a healthy amount of these things can make
running a home go more smoothly, but if I spend all of my time cleaning, trying
to keep things perfectly neat and orderly, I fear I will miss out of the joys
of just LIVING.
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| The typical state of our living room |
I could clean my
son’s room every day and our nightly routine is putting the books on the shelf,
the toys backs in their respective places, story time, song, and prayers. I
could easily walk behind him all day long and pick up crumbs from snack time,
place toys back in the basket, and organize the books in his room by the Dewey
Decimal System (wouldn’t that be grand) but I would be teaching him that THINGS
are important. Although we should take care of the things God has graciously blessed us with, I believe they shouldn't be our focus. There is a time and place
for cleaning and keeping things tidy and it isn’t every moment of every day. I
think I would have to walk behind everyone with a dust buster and some Clorox
wipes in order to keep my house as tidy as some of the spaces and places on my
favorite home organization blogs.
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| A little boy lives and plays here |
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| I doubt anyone would ever repin this |
As hard as I try my counters will always be cluttered, my floors covered with toys, the laundry piled high. My reality is that people actually LIVE in my house. I have a child that plays and learns while I stay home with him all day and the result of that is a mess and complete chaos at times.
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| My kitchen is always a work in progress |
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| This is what a book shelf should look like. Lots of learning going on here! |
But I am learning to appreciate chaos. Chaos means we have people we love in our homes for dinner. Chaos means my son is happy and healthy. Chaos means my son is having fun. Chaos means people are more important than a tidy home.
One day my house will be neat and clean. There will be no messes and very little laundry. My house will be quiet and peaceful. We won't have to leave the dinner table because we smell a stinky and little guy has had a blowout in his high chair. There won't be any toys to clean up or books to put back on the shelf. One day this reality will bring tears to our eyes because we will have an empty nest and our minds will be filled with the memories of these little years that have come and gone.
Today I am going to rest in the reality of my chaos and praise my Maker for the blessing that it is!
Yes, there are loads of laundry to get done, groceries to buy, dishes to put away. For now, I am going to focus on this little guy because he wants to be pushed in the stroller, around the house :) He is more important than my chores.
Sincerely,
Becky
