I have been home for 19 days straight. I "left the house" twice, once to drive up the street for a work conference call and once for a walk with a friend who lives nearby. I never ever thought I would miss a solo trip to the grocery store, but here I am.
Like the rest of the world, this has been an incredible change of pace for me. I'm used to dropping my kids off at daycare, going to my office (swinging through Starbucks if I want), working, catching up with coworkers, and overall being on my own schedule a majority of the day. I miss those days and am struggling to navigate these days with no definite end in sight. Now, I'm stay-at-home mom, preschool teacher, and probation officer. Twenty. Four. Seven. I should add, being a stay-at-home wife has been equally challenging, we are not used to navigating our entire day together. Reading my own words about my current responsibilities, it's obvious, of course I'm tired. You probably are too. What is being asked of us today was not asked of us a month ago or ever before in our lifetime. Yet, I feel this pressing need to be productive. We've painted a new room for Nick and moved him into it, sorted all of our baby stuff, cleaned out our van, de-cluttered closets, started seeds for our garden, and organized our storage room. Productive? Yes. Good/important to set goals and have motivators during this time? Yes. Okay to rest and do nothing? Yes to that too. So that's what I did yesterday. Austin brought me breakfast and I hid in our room past 8. Then we watched Tangled and Onward. I didn't move from the couch from 3:30-6:30. Our kids went to bed before 7. We had game night over Zoom and we called it a day. It was not outwardly productive. I'm not usually one to brag about getting 83 steps in a day, but yesterday's physical rest and break from "to-do's" produced emotional rest and "heart productivity" that was just as needed, if not more, than finishing our next big project. Austin and I have gone through the book Dream Big, Think Small four times now. In the book, the author Jeff Manion talks a lot about rest. Rest is deliberate and planned out. It takes preparation the day before and allows you to take a rest from both vocational and domestic responsibilities. It's easy to trick ourselves into think Sabbath is just a break from vocational work but it's also breaking from the house project, mindlessly scrolling (guilty!) budget talk, trip planning, grocery shopping, etc. because that's all work too. It doesn't have to be prefect, mine wasn't yesterday, but something is better than nothing. I can't be the only one feeling the need to be hyper-productive during quarantine. I can't be the only one who's tired (like really tired) either. As we enter Holy Week, let's commit to taking care of our tiredness by resting in God's promises and the hope of the empty tomb.
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Hi! I'm Haley. Archives
May 2019
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