The Unseen

Being a stay at home mom this year is wonderful. I am learning to do it better. Somedays I feel that all I did was clean, feed, tidy up, laundry, clean, do dishes...and on and on. I had come to a place where I was being very aware of how much "maid work" I was doing, because it is never ending. So I tried doing it less often. But, letting things get out of control is not fun, especially when you are living in it everyday. So, I felt stuck in a cycle where there is no solution. I'm figuring it out, slowly, maybe I am. This post by an amazing lady has helped me in just the way I needed. It gave me more words to what I've been thinking about. This morning when getting ready for the playgroup to arrive, some of her words came to mind. Focus on the unseen. Let go of the idol of "the seen". My house doesn't have to be super clean. Crumbs, dirt, dust bunnies are all just a part of life. So, I stopped what I was doing. I went to where I kept my Kids of Integrity plan (which had almost been completely abandoned). Glancing at it, I was reminded of the next activity I had wanted to do. Then it happened, the perfect moment for that exact lesson I had just glanced at. I asked my kids, who kept turning on the water in the tub, to not run anymore water. I heard the very ugly words come from their frustrated mouths, "Fine then, we don't love you." I got the dead houseplant and used the analogy of how we need to "water" people with kind words. Look at what happens when a plant doesn't get water and imagine what happens to a persons heart when they don't get "watered" with kind words. So, I was glad that they got the lesson. I loved when they were asking later in the day, "is that watering you?" And, I was glad that I got a lesson reinforced - being able to focus less on the seen and more on the unseen will bring us blessings.