Lacy Tickle, Pat, Rock, Scratch and Rub...

I'm forgetting what it means to be a Mom. I am losing myself in layers of dirty laundry and dishes. I've been struggling with Depression, which may or may not be a result of a hormonal imbalance. I'm irritable, tired, weepy and just over all..blah. It came on suddenly, and it will pass. But in the meantime I'm feeling horrible. Stressed and Junk. Money is tight, we are behind...so quickly it happens...Joel is sick for a few days, has to take time off for Drill as well and all of a sudden we are behind...

Emma is sitting in Micah's crib right now, after waking him up early from his nap. She is singing to him. When Emma was little, probably around 2, we started doing this thing for her at bedtime. It started as "Lacy Tickle" (which is named after my very best friend who used to lightly scratch my back while we talked about anything and everything) So we started with that, and over time Emma added more to the routine. Patting her back, then rocking her, then scratching her back and then Rubbing her back. She used to request it all the time, you couldn't but her to bed without doing it at night. So Emma just said to me, that since she doesn't need it anymore, she's going to do it Micah all the time.

I'm missing so much. I just want to be a good Mom. I'm so overwhelmed I can't remember and enjoy the little things my kids are doing every day, living their life.

Starting from Scratch

I feel so down. I feel like if I could just get everything in order, I could keep things up no problem. I have the motivation, yet I'm just finding myself so very tired. I have been going to bed early, rising early and yet, still struggling to make it through the day. I haven't been gaining weight, although haven't been losing much either. I'm at a cross road. I can take the unfamiliar path I know I need to, choose to just start doing. Or take the more familiar one, where I slink back into my comfort zone and say "Next week, or next month..." I'm so tired of forever coming to this cross road. I want to be Present. I want to live bodly and with a purpose. I want to be an overcomer. And I want to worship God with all that I am, my life, my actions, my thoughts and my entire being.

Starting in my mind?

I am in the process of spring cleaning, except I've mostly just begun in my head. I've been hacking away at laundry all week, but I really have been organizing my thoughts, my ideas and trying to come up with a solution to, well, myself. I know that I am:

1. A procrastinator. I feel the energy while I am doing things at the last minute. It is then that special projects really begin to take shape.
2. I have some sort of A.D.D type thing going on. I cannot focus on 1 thing at a time. Its ridiculous how bad I have gotten. If you look at my computer at any given time, I will have 4 windows open and each of those windows will have 3 or 4 tabs.
3. I am a creative genius. Ok, well...maybe just creative. Not sure about the genius part. But I love coming up with new ideas, new purposes for things and love making old things new again.
4. I love to change things around. When I was younger, my room would be so trashed. I had so much stuff in one small room, that the only way I would ever clean it was to put everything on the bed and dressers, move the furniture around and then clean from there. I had to have the inspiration of moving furniture around in order to clean up the mess. I still don't know why I function this way.
5. I put things off. I am lazy...well...I find more value in doing things that I like; such as, sitting on the couch watching my husband play video games or tickling my kids, than I do in cleaning my kitchen. Ok, so we probably all do...but a lot of times I don't do those ever so important things until they are so out of control that I don't know where to begin.
6. I like lists...but not too long of lists. I need things written down in front of me, but not that its so overwhelming. I've opted to try out Sidetracked Home Executives Index Card System to see if I can work from there...

So there you have it. This is me in a nutshell (as it pertains to the care and keeping of my home). So in my mind I can visualize my house cleaned, and I can visualize my new system working, but until I get off Blogger and off my Butt and start to implement it, it will never happen. Off I go!!

My Husband, The Temper Tamer

I am defensive. It is a habit that I learned as a child growing up because of feeling as though I was never good enough. I won't go into those details, but I have realized that to this day, I still can get very defensive and have a bit of a temper. I notice it most when I am perhaps lacking in some very obvious areas, *cough* cleaning *cough*....and I know this and am feeling as though the entire world is stacked against me. And then something very small happens to set off an argument that shouldn't be an argument but because my husband and I don't argue about very serious things (we tend to have more discussions) we always find something so minute to argue over. Like this:

Husband is looking through medicine baskets for a sudafed. He places his vitamin on the shelf while he is looking. He then proceeds to ask me where the sudafed are. I come over, grab a basket down and start rifiling through it, in the process knocking the vitamin off the shelf and onto the floor under the toilet. I immediately put up the defensive walls thinking husband is going to discuss with me the need to be aware of my surroundings. I tell him that He should not have left a vitamin there. He then proceeds to discuss with me the need to be aware of my surroundings. A 10 minute conversation follows about the importance of being aware of ones surroundings and the act of having grace for ones shortcomings. At this point I am in the shower, and of course, what husband is trying to say was that He was not going to say anything at all, that it was no big deal for the vitamin to fall on the ground until I of course through up the defense and opened the can of worms. A few moments later, as I am contemplating my defensiveness...and searching my heart for root problems such as the fact that my house is trashed and I probably could be doing slightly more to make it untrashed, Husband cracks a joke that sends me into a fit of giggles. There it is. The peacemaker: Laughter. My husband, who loves me in spite of all my shortcomings and cluttered nature, who constantly supports me and tries to understand me, who loves for me to take time to play games with him instead of doing the dishes after dinner...this is the man God made for me. He is my soulmate, my perfect match. Notice I did not say he was perfect, but was indeed made perfectly for me. I love him. And all that I do for our home is because I want to show this man how much I love him and our children. Of course its a battle everyday...but the love is still there.

How many times are arguments really the result of circumstances, or are they really a direct result of some deeper issues going on in our hearts?

Spring Cleaning

Ok, this is the week. Spring Cleaning. It is supposed to be gorgeous at least for the first half of this week. I'm talking 75-85 degrees! So before it gets too hot to clean, I think I need to bang out my spring cleaning.

I've started with Laundry today. I've actually made big progress today, as now I can see the floor of my laundry room. The picture is proof, my laundry room floor is linoleum. I've got my bed piled high with folded clothes, baskets patiently waiting their turn, and I am sorting through outgrown clothes at the same time.

If you know me, you know that I am not by any definition of the word a neat freak. If you know my husband, you know that he kind of is...but for the sake of our marriage he does not speak too often of matters of the, well, housekeeping. He quietly goes about his normal routines, and if there is something that isn't working the way it is supposed to he wordlessly gets the point across. Except last night, when walking from the kitchen to the living room. Joel: (casually) "So are you going to be doing some serious house cleaning tomorrow?" Me: (just as casually) "Why yes, Yes I am. How did you know?"

So this kicks off my spring cleaning week.

Rest

I have been tired. So tired. And that is directly affecting my ability to be myself. It seems to me, on the nights when I have the most time to sleep, I get woken up multiple times by children. On the nights where I stay up too late, The kids sleep soundly through the night. Why is that?

Yesterday I woke up after not having good sleep. I was immediately overwhelmed by the thought of being a mom yesterday. I was so tired. My thoughts were immediately negative and bitter. "Why this...If only that..." As I walked through my house and saw all the things I needed to do I became so overwhelmed that I literally went back to hide under the covers. It was there that I worked through a depressive state, and really cried out to God to give me strength. I texted my husband and told him my current mental/emotional/spiritual state and he said that he was praying for me. With the baby taking a nap and the girls occupied by a movie, I laid there and I literally felt a spiritual battle taking place while I just kind of rested. I wasn't fully asleep (As another mom knows that no one can fully fall asleep when there are children not tucked soundly in their beds) but I was in a restful state.

After that, I got out of bed and walked through my house again. I started a load of laundry, did half the dishes, and picked up the living room. I proceeded to vacuum and then just spend naptime doing whatever I wanted.

I've been off with eating and excersize, but as I explained my day yesterday to a very dear friend of mine, she said, "Liz, you will not be perfect all the time...but you will be victrious. Yesterday, you were victorious in overcoming that depression."
That is the key. Don't give up being victorious. I also felt the tides turn yesterday when I caught a vision for my house. I have been wanting to buy a few bakers racks to use for storing things, and since we were going to be able to do that yesterday night, I started focusing on preparing the places they were going to go. Once I had a vision for my day, it was easier to tackle the mess.

This is me being real.