My house is dirty right now. Yes, dirty. The floors need to be swept and mopped, the carpet vacuumed, fingerprints and rogue toothpaste all over the bathroom mirrors and dust...well I just won’t mention that. And the toilets....one day I did wipe up those dribbles my kids so affectionately leave behind but that was the extent of my toilet cleaning. I had planned on doing a post about how I clean a little bit everyday so that I don’t have to do everything at once. You know, Monday’s are toilets, Tuesday’s are floors and so forth and so on. Honestly, for me, I love this idea. It makes the job seem less daunting. But I can’t write about that. I haven’t stayed consistent in those endeavors….not once since I thought about doing that post. Instead, what I can write about is that my house is dirty.
When I thought about this I immediately started to feel like a failure (that’s unfortunately my go to emotion so much of the time.) This dirtiness isn’t just leftover from the weekend...me being on strike since it was Mother’s Day. It comes from a week....hmm probably two weeks of just not making it a priority. Don’t get me wrong, I love a clean house. When everything is tidy and in its place. When I can smell my essential oil cleaners and vinegar as you go into each room. There really is an internal reward that makes me feel like I have accomplished something. Oh how I love a clean house!
I have been challenging myself lately to change my way of thinking. To get outside of my normal response of “I am a failure” and try to see things differently, from a new perspective. To give myself a little grace and focus on what really matters. When I began to think things over, I realized that although I hadn’t gotten my house cleaned I had spent time investing in people. This is ultimately what matters in the long run. I was able to spend part of almost every day at my kids’ school handing out “Teacher Appreciation” gifts letting them know how much we appreciate their hard work and sacrifice. This would include four dozen homemade cinnamon rolls and caramel popcorn for each and every one of them (and yes, they gotta be homemade!) We spent time with a friend who was visiting from out of town, letting our boys expend all of their energy (or at least all of mine) on a hike. We had soccer practices and games and we made it on time to all of them. We may not of been early but we were there! I spent daily time with the Lord, getting up before my tribe so that I could have my fill to make it through the day. I practiced Yoga…deep breathing and deep stretches have become a love of mine. Laundry soap was made and home cooked food even in the midst of running around at night for those practices and games. I even attended a field trip with my first grader!
I don’t say any of this to toot my own horn. I know my life looks different from yours whether you work outside the home or not. My point is not to compare how I spent my week as opposed to yours. Here is my point: once I started looking back over my week I realized that even though it didn’t result in a cleaner house, I was given the chance to invest not only in my own family but also in the lives of others. I am pretty thankful for that. Most of the time I am so hard on myself that I can’t even be grateful for what I have gotten accomplished or who I have affected. I am realizing that I am not a failure because I let my house get a little (or a lot) dirty. I know that my efforts were placed somewhere else and they were a good place to put them.
I am choosing today to think differently. Vowing not be too hard on myself. I am thankful to have people in my life that I get to bless and invest in. I rejoice that I even have a home that can get dirty. I am focusing on how filling it is to invest in myself: spiritually and physically. I am not a failure. So what is it? What do you need to think differently about? What have you been whispering to yourself that you don’t even realize you are saying yet you are believing it, wholly and fully? Sometimes thriving means challenging your own perspective and taking the steps to change it.