My Three

I am at this critical mass point where how I live my life is heavily impacting others’ lives. Three others to be specific: one husband, one toddler, and one baby. I find myself often in the tension of being overwhelmed by tasks and chores competing with the vast need for love and affection and attention my three require.

While my husband was out of town, I really enjoyed being with my boys and discovered I had all this reserve energy. Part of it was a result of others’ prayers for that time to be peaceful. But the other part was that I engaged in those few days with very little expectation on what I would get done. I planned to just be with the boys. I also had lots of time to myself while the boys napped or once they were in bed.

So, we are evaluating how to make that peace, life, and energy more my “all the time” reality.

My peaceful weekend with the boys also occurred around the same time that I was preparing the wife as helper lesson for our medical wives’ Bible study. One of the questions I asked the ladies to ask their own husbands was essentially, “How can I be more emotionally/relationally available to you?” The idea being that God created the woman as a helper in response to it not being good for the man to be alone. It’s amazing how intensely God uses my own life as an object lesson for the things I plan to teach in Bible study.

My husband’s answer to that question confirmed the need for me to evaluate how to prioritize being present. Through a few good conversations he asked me to consider how I could back up on household/life tasks so that I could be more emotionally and relationally present with him and the boys. He wants more of me. And he wants the boys to have more of me, too. So, now my job is to figure out what needs to be streamlined, removed, or done differently so that I am able to give more of me to my three.

This also means that now, more than ever, I need to prioritize my alone time so that I can recharge my introverted self. This means that journaling, reading, and writing are essentials while the boys nap in the afternoon. If I am going to have anything of myself to give to my boys during the day or my husband at the end of the day, I have to prioritize regaining energy, peace, and life by being alone and quiet and inside my head and my heart. I have to take time to connect to the Spirit through journaling and prayer, gaining His perspective on all that is going on around me, asking Him for the ability to love and be present.

If I am going to get stressed over some seeming “goal” I have in my head, it’s probably not necessary or at least the way I’m planning to do it is not necessary. For instance, rather than homemade Valentine’s Day treats for friends and neighbors, our treats were store bought. Rather than having a perfect house, I am opting for more time with my family, which means that there is clean laundry waiting to be folded and a vacuum cleaner that needs to be dropped off at the repair shop (which means my floor is currently “unvacuumed”). For the organized task-master that I am, these small loose ends are milestones for me in choosing what to prioritize in any given moment.

Having a husband who wants more of me is good thing. And at the end of our life, I know that I would regret missing him (or the boys) more than I will regret not having all my tasks done all the time.