As I write this, duffel bags stuffed full sit in piles around my living room floor. My kids have been wiling away these below-zero Minnesota days playing “Airport.” Unopened packages of diapers and wipes, baby dolls, and papers with ticket numbers and gate designations are also strewn haphazardly throughout our entire main level. A mound of pillows and blankets rises up from the bottom of the stairs (not related to the Airport game), and the kitchen counter is covered in watercolor paint.
These are the remnants of a homeschool day.
I verbally and intellectually assent to one of the benefits of homeschooling being time to play, time to imagine. And I do truly believe that. But this mess, this is the price. The price I never really want to pay. As a person whose personality has always been “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” the sweeping and unnecessary removal of things from their places seems brazen, reckless, and draining. “But all of that was where it belonged!!” I fume.
And they don’t just limit the stuff they put into bags (so. many. bags.) to their own stuff. They also bag up pantry food, bogart dish towels and plastic plates, and temporarily relocate Mommy’s Decorations.
It’s a fact that my kids’ abilities and propensities to create elaborate worlds (I want to say messes, but they really are deliberate schemes) that involve a lot of stuff far, far, far outstrips their energy and willingness to put all that stuff away. I really don’t think they are unique in that regard. As a 1 on the Enneagram, this is where my inner critic pipes up and says, “And you put away too many toys for them! You let them get away with too much! They should be forced to pick up ALL of their worlds/messes themselves. If they were, perhaps they wouldn’t make such big messes.”
Thanks inner critic, that’s very… unhelpful.
We do require our kids to help clean up. They each have a nightly chore.
But like I said, the mess is bigger than their willingness to clean, and my willingness to force them. (Plus, I secretly really enjoy putting things away, but that’s beside the point.)
These messes drive me kind of batty, like eye-twitching batty. I hate messes. I hate things being out of place. I am the person who walks by the bookshelf on the way to the bathroom, or to get a cup of coffee, and stops just to shift a decoration over half an inch, so that it’s exactly “where it should be.”
Needless to say, having four kids and homeschooling* while trying to keep a clean, tidy house is an exercise in futility.
Even as I write those words, I can imagine all the moms out there on the other side of the internet reading my words and sighing exasperatedly, “No, it’s not futile!” Whether they’re saying that from the position of having conquered the house messes, or from being unwilling to wave the white flag in their quest for the tidy house, I’m not sure. Maybe a little of both?
Tonight, I started down the familiar ruts of throwing toys around (if they break, I throw them away without remorse) and venting at my kids about the messes they make but don’t clean up, but I knew — the Spirit reminded me — that that was not how I wanted to act. So I took a breather. I stood out in my 33-degree garage in the dark, praying to God.
He reminded me that “My kids are more important than a clean house.”
I could think of so many objections, so many qualifications. But my personality…! But they need to learn…! But they are being…!
No. No excuses. No buts.
If I truly want healing, if I truly want wholeness, if I truly want peace, I have to do things God’s way.
I have to do things God’s way.
I hate to admit that God’s way is quite a bit different than how I have been handling these messes. In this struggle and tension, I am often reminded of the amazing quote from Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts:
“I’m blind to joy’s well every time I really don’t want it. The well is always there. And I choose not to see it. Don’t I really want joy? Don’t I really want the fullest life? For all my yearning for joy, longing for joy, begging for joy–is the bald truth that I prefer the empty dark? Prefer drama? Why do I lunge for control instead of joy? Is it somehow more perversely satisfying to flex control’s muscle? Ah–power–like Satan. Do I think Jesus-grace too impotent to give me the full life?”
page 130
I lunge for control instead of joy.
So tonight, after regrouping and praying, I came out of the garage, dried my tears, walked past all the messes, gave my kids hugs, told them I loved them, and apologized for yelling at them. I told them that they were more important than the messes, than a clean house.
And I want to live there, whether it be amidst messes or amidst a semi-tidy house.
I want to choose joy, instead of control. Connection over cleanliness.
(*I add homeschooling because when our kids attended public school and were gone for the whole school day, it was very different. It was still busy, still challenging, but there was much less house mess to contend with.)
Life, Really Blog 
Leave a comment