- What is enough time spent cleaning and keeping the house in order?
- What is enough time spent playing with your child/children and encouraging their development?
- What is enough time spent reading to them?
- When have you taken enough pictures of your child/children and spent enough time documenting their lives?
- What is enough time spent documenting your own life?
- What is enough time spent reading the scriptures or conference talks?
- What is enough worrying about any given situation?
- How do you know when you've said enough or when more talking is appropriate?
- What is enough time spent exercising?
- What is enough time spent relaxing and rejuvenating?
- What is enough effort spent beautifying your home?
- What is enough time spent in the kitchen creating that meal that may or may not be good enough?
- What is enough time spent planning out that perfect couponing trip?
- How do you know when you've had enough to eat?
- What is enough time spent doing things that you enjoy?
- What is enough time spent doing things for your spouse?
- What is enough social time?
- What is enough time spent with family?
- What is enough time spent alone?
The list could go on. Life is such a balancing act. Often times for me it seems that the trivial mundane things in life take precedence over things that are of greater importance to me, leaving little time or energy for them. I've noticed this struggle to find a balance in my life increase as I've become a mother and as my roles in life have evolved.
Before Landon was born, I had visions of being the perfect stay at home mom: meticulously clean house, great dinners every night, house decorated just right, having so much time on my hands to spend playing and oohing and awing over Landon, getting my body right down to my "ideal" weight because of all that time on my hands to spend exercising and eating right, having ample time to spend reading, blogging, and doing nice things for Brad....Since then of course reality has set in. And figuring out what is enough has remained a dilemma for me.
I love being a mom. Landon has brought more joy to me than I could have ever imagined. Along with being a mom comes a great responsibility. I find myself spending a lot of time feeling guilty. I feel guilty if I am working around the house doing dishes, couponing (hauling Landon around town for this new hobby), getting ready (an extra helping of guilt if I take time to shave my legs or tweeze my eyebrows) or what not and not paying a lot of attention to Landon. I feel like I am never doing enough to help him develop. On the other hand I feel guilty if I am just sitting and playing with Landon and not having much to show for my time spent in that activity: dishes still in the sink, no time logged on the treadmill, no particular achievement to report to Brad.
Of course Landon is WAY more important to me than having a clean house and being in good shape and printing out great coupons. So why do I feel guilty about any time spent oohing and awing over him? And why can't I feel okay that reality is that I just can't spend a lot of time oohing and awing over him? It's a darned if you do, darned if you don't kind of thing (pardon my language:). So I am in search of the right balance of what is enough. Have any of you found it? If so I will pay you for the answer:)
Right now I can tell that I did not get enough sleep last night so I am going to shut my eyes for 15 minutes until Landon wakes up from his morning nap:).
...What is enough time spent getting this post to publish! grrr...there goes my time for a catnap.
5 comments:
Oh, sweetie, you sure hit the nail on the head. That is definitely an ongoing dilemma. One of my favorite books is 'Lighten Up' by sister Okazaki. While she doesn't hand out all the answers {durnit!} she sure has a lot of perspective. My favorite chapter is titled: Motherhood-Less Guilt, More Joy. She says in it that if you only accomplished half of what you wanted to accomplish, then just pat yourself on half of your back!
I COMPLETELY understand what you are talking about, Shanna. I don't have the answers either, but I'm right there with you.
I would say that you are doing a phenomenal job at "enough" of the things on your list... go ahead and pat your whole back if you can reach it:) It is a hard balance, I love you Shan!
I don't have the answer, but I feel the same way. When I spent time just with Eli I felt like I was neglecting things that needed to get done, but then I didn't want to not spend time with him because he was SO much more important than the other "things." Oh, it's so hard. But, I believe you can feel good about your efforts and just move forward trying to balance and not feel guilty.
I loved this post. I think often as mothers we don't give ourselves "enough" credit for the things we do. Even if we don't do anything besides play with our children. I wish i new the answer also. Some days I sit back and think about my day and say "oh i should have...or could have..."
one day at a time, right?
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