This kind of busy mom...

I recently heard a friend talking about how much she loved a picture she saw of herself; in it, she was in the middle of teaching a preschool soccer class, and was wearing her 1 year old child in a carrier while he nursed. In one hand she had a soccer ball and was instructing a second child in soccer technique, and in the other hand, she held a snack she was feeding to yet a third child. She was also standing on one foot while she was pantomiming kicking the ball. Her impression of that photo of herself was that that was exactly the kind of mom she always hoped to be. The mom who could do it all, and all at the same time.

I reflected on her exultations over the achievement of this candid moment in her life and realized it made me sad...if her goal for that kind of moment meant that there are no moments in her life like this:

Or this:

Or even this: 

Most people probably don't perceive the fastidiousness with which I would prefer to run my household...if I had my 'druthers, everything would always be spic and span. This is how I feel relaxed, and without it, I feel the Spirit is somewhat restrained...the disorder is too much and then I explode into a cleaning frenzy and clean everything top to bottom. So in order to avoid that, I like to clean up messes right away, do that project right now, etc. so that it's done and off my mind and so I can experience the benefit of it being finished. I'm the opposite of a procrastinator...maybe to a fault because my kids often wait around while I finish "one last thing".

BUT. This is not how children work. This is not what they need. They need their parents to SLOW DOWN. To un-schedule them. To laugh and have time to be silly and play. So SOMETIMES the dishes are left undone while we go play catch before we lose the daylight. SOMETIMES we leave for a field trip while the house isn't tidied up yet because if we don't, the kids will miss out. SOMETIMES we tidy later, we clean later, we work later. SOMETIMES, the house gets a little mmmmessy. 'Cause that's what kids do sometimes- dirt will happen. And it should...my husband always says he wants to see the kids dirty by the time he gets home so he knows they played that day. Love him.

I'm all about "family work" and having my children do chores right alongside me. They do. And they actually love their chores because it's meaningful work and they're doing them with Mommy. But we don't over schedule the other stuff. We don't even always leave the house every day. We only have one thing besides church each week that we've committed to, and we like it that way, so that as much as possible, it's not a choice between getting tasks done, or playing--there's time for it all. But only because we create a vacuum in our schedule for....anything that we come up with! It's not that we don't want to be busy- we love being busy! We're busy almost from our first moment to our last each day; but instead of being in the car running to and fro, hopefully it's spent gardening, reading, building, playing, doing chores, talking about God and Jesus, serving others, and having slow, thoughtful moments. Time to read scriptures, time to write in our journal. Time to sit and watch the tree branches blow in the wind while you think deep thoughts.

This friend who loved her picture so much- chances are she does have slow moments with her kids- I sure hope so anyway. But it really got me thinking about how intentional I'd like to be about doing this:

And this:

Learning to take the slow moments has been a really refining process for me. The first twenty-five years of my life was spent learning how to be efficient, and I got really good at it. But maybe the next twenty-five will be spent having slow moments with my family. That sounds pretty good to me.  

Here's a link to another momma who seems to have some similar thoughts...

https://projecteve.com/books-vegetables-12-reasons-working-moms-shouldnt-slack-reading/