A needed reminder

There's a basket of clean laundry on the floor at my feet, a toppled pile of folded clothes next to it. There are dishes in the sink and toys on the floor and playdough crumbs drying on the kitchen table... but since all three littles are napping (two sweetly sleeping, one just resting) I'm pausing for a break myself, laptop on my lap. I'll get to work in a minute.

I click through my reader to one of my favorite blogs and soak up Ann's words. I see myself in them. They could have been mine, had I taken the time write with such thought and beauty:

I think how I want a crumbless, smudgeless, spotless house, a house with empty laundry baskets, empty sinks, empty garbage cans, with floors like mirrors and mirrors like water, and a pantry lined neat like books in the study and pies lining the counter like sweet children all in a row. I want the (seeming) perfection all day that only happens at night when the whirl slows to a still and the six children sleep, their books and their legos, their papers and their creations, all finding their resting places too. I want a father-in-law who walks in mid-spin and sees what I have done with a day, with a week, and smiles his satisfaction.

I want things seen.

These can be idols.

I've been struggling with this idolatry of late -- the desire to have things looking just so, all orderly and peaceful and right. And perhaps it is because so much of motherhood simply can't be measured that I've found myself focusing on the concrete accomplishments: the house all vacuumed, the packages all sent, the groceries all put away. I run the list of what I've done through my head, rattle it off when I recount my day to Jim. I judge my day against the list. I judge myself against the list. A long list must mean I'm doing my job well. That I'm a good wife and a good mother and keep a good home.

But it doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that at all.

Because in my haste to reorganize the linen closet or to clean the carpets or to vary our meal-planning or to fight down the laundry, sometimes my littles get left behind. They get a moody, anxious mama who's forgotten what it's really all about. Ann writes:

The product is secondary…. Perhaps even pointless. It’s the prayers, the relationship, the love while doing the work, that hold the meaning, the merit.

I needed that reminder.

I pray that today I'll be here, where I am, doing the work I'm meant to do with love and with patience and with the knowledge that neither my family nor my God wants my self-righteous lists or my perceived accomplishments -- not my meals or my clean laundry or my (one day, hopefully) organized closets. They want so much more: conversation, presence, relationship. They want my heart.

They want me.

You can find Ann's post "priorities: things unseen" here. It's just one example of the reason she's one of my favorite bloggers...