The other day one of my Facebook friends, a young mother with three children, expressed some of her frustrations with trying to maintain a clean and orderly home while struggling with the ever present chaos of family life. She was asking for practical suggestions from her friends, even though she is exemplary in maintaining this kind of order and cleanliness. She very probably was merely venting to a friendly audience, and looking for moral support and encouragement with the hard and demanding job that is motherhood.
I made a comment on her comment stream that went a bit against the grain of things by suggesting that messes can wait, and that taking care of herself--if she is feeling stressed out, or relaxing with her family--if they need her time, may be a priority higher than the cleanliness her home. Of course she resisted my suggestion that a mess might wait until later to clean. I'm not sure she really heard what I was trying to say, but I have experienced these same stresses, and I have had some memorable moments in my life, when my husband has rightly put me in my place, by demanding that my first attention be placed on him, or on our family, rather than on the practical work of my career, whether that career be teaching, or running a household.
I was thinking today of times when I have observed people who are experiencing a natural disaster. Often you see this kind of thing on the news. A reporter will put a microphone in someone's face. You will see the ravaged remains of their homes and possessions in a heap behind them, and invariably, when asked for their response on the tragedy they have just survived, those people will speak of gratitude for their lives, or the lives of their families, and gratitude for the help they are receiving. Rarely will they bemoan their messed up beyond recognition house.
It is impressive to me, that when the material accumulation of a lifetime is literally demolished in a moment, a person's gratitude for life and family most clearly comes into focus. If we could manage to keep that priority order in tact through our normal days and routines, maybe we wouldn't need to have disasters in our lives to direct our focus towards things that matter most--cause they would already be there.
Yes maintaining order in our lives is an essential element for peace and progress, and it is important; but it is not more important than our own and our families' needs for light, truth, love, and attention.
Yes, Jesus taught that we should have order, but he demonstrated to us repeatedly that we should love God and others first, and that we should take time out of our schedules to administer to the one--even when that one is ourselves.
He took himself away and was alone with God. He paused along the way to administer to the needs of others. He was never so driven by his "schedule" of things to do, that people became less important than his "to do" list.
I hope that as women and mothers especially, that the homes we keep and the order we strive to maintain is not a focus that takes priority over the people we serve.
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