Wake up. Get changed. Eat breakfast. Start kids on math. Cleanup breakfast dishes. Put out a fire between the toddler and preschooler. Check on math progress. Start a load of laundry. Do spelling with one child while building blocks with the little ones. Switch to language arts with the other kid. Do a reading lesson with the preschooler. Check assignment. Snacktime. Get everyone a snack and turn on music to listen to for music appreciation. Change the laundry. And so forth until lunch.
After lunch, hand the kids off to a babysitter to get in a few hours of work or squeeze in a workout, Jesus time, household management tasks, and emails while the kids have quiet time and/or finish assignments. Get everyone up from rest time. Another snack. Cleanup the torpedo mess that is the house after a day of homeschooling. Start dinner prep. Take the kids outside to play. Talk to a neighbor. Help the kids work out disagreements with the neighbor kids. Call a family member I haven’t talked to lately while the kids play. Back inside to finish dinner prep. Eat dinner. Attempt to have a conversation with my husband. Clean up dinner. Start bedtime routine. PJs, teeth, drinks of water, sound machines, loveys, door properly ajar.
Catch up with my husband. Maybe take a walk, have Jesus time or workout if I didn’t get that in, squeeze in some writing time, or simply connect with my husband by watching a favorite show.
That’s what my days usually look like. They are beautifully full. Often stressful with little time to catch my breath. Never lacking in activity and to-dos. Sure, it can get repetitive, but who’s got time to notice???
That’s life homeschooling four kids, managing a household, working part time, and being in ministry with your husband.
These last couple weeks, life slowed down considerably. We’re wrapping up homeschool (as we should be – we’ve been schooling almost nonstop since JULY!). A couple other extra responsibilities came to a close. And suddenly I find…I can breathe. Instead of dashing from one room of the house to the next, meeting needs and accomplishing tasks, I’m spending more time simply being with my kids. Sitting on the floor playing with the little ones. Standing outside pushing a swing on our newly-built swing set. Listening to the ramblings and ideation of the older ones. Taking legitimate rest in the afternoons while my kids have quiet time.
It feels strange. I’m not used to it. To be honest, the last couple weeks have felt rather long. It’s amazing how much slower time passes when life isn’t a compilation of back-to-back dashing sprints.
My impulse is too fill up the mundane moments by scrolling social media or news sites, neither of which I actually enjoy. Or to create extra household projects that really don’t need doing. Or to check my email every five minutes. Or to offer myself to others to take on responsibilities I shouldn’t be taking on when God is giving me the gift of rest.
And it is a gift. A gift I should cherish, not discard. A gift I should steward by allowing it to fill me up and refresh me before the next fast-paced season begins. A gift I should model to my children by showing them how to reject the rat-race narrative of our culture and embrace simply being.
I sent my husband an email of encouragement the other day. In it I shared something God has been teaching. I wrote,
As I spent the morning outside with our kids and the neighbor girl, pushing swings and intervening in the occasional scuffle but mostly just enjoying their enjoyment and the beautiful weather, I was struck by how the gospel frees me to do that. To have a morning where I’m not accomplishing a million things, where I’m not feeling antsy because I’m outside “doing nothing” because that’s where my kids need me to be rather than inside cleaning the disastrous basement and the smudges on the windows and my dirty toilet. God doesn’t need me to do anything except what He asks me to do in each moment (and He doesn’t even NEED me to do that; He just wants me to), and this morning, that’s what He asked of me.
How much different life is when we walk in the freedom of the gospel and moment-by-moment faithfulness to what God is asking us to do right now rather than scrambling around doing all the things we think we should do to be the person we think we should be to compare to those we think we should measure up to.
As a pastor of ours once said, we’ve got to “stop shoulding all over” ourselves!
If we’re honest, we like living by the “shoulds” because it fills the quiet we don’t want to face. The mundane and the quiet bring us face-to-face with the reality that, as Solomon concluded in Ecclesiastes, all this stuff of the earth is ultimately “vanity, a chasing after the wind.”
We’d much prefer to run ourselves ragged so that at least we feel purposeful, accomplished, worthy. So we don’t have to face the last kind of music we don’t want to hear – silence, in which we encounter our truest selves, our deepest fears.
But it’s in the silence that often God speaks. It’s in the mundane that we get glimpses of the idols we need to confront and the sins we need to lay down. It’s in the slow that we learn we’re not as indispensable as we think we are, and actually, that’s reason to rejoice!
Even though the moments can seem mundane and the minutes can feel long, there is purpose in the mundane. There is purpose in the quiet. There is purpose in the slow. Because, as Solomon also concludes, the things of this life aren’t vanity when they’re coupled with something greater, something more lasting, something eternal: fear of the Lord.
I was reminded of this tonight as I did my devotional from Ruth Chou Simons “Beholding and Becoming Guided Companion.” Looking at Romans 8:28-30, she asks, “How can these verses help you ‘be glad in today’?”
Truth be told, the question stumped me. I skipped it and moved on to the prayer of thanksgiving below. But then, the answer came. My pen, guided by the Spirit as He instructed my heart in the truth of Scripture, began to write,
Nothing is in vain. No circumstance is too bad to be used for His purpose and my good. No moment is too mundane to matter in the scope of eternity.
BOOM. Mic drop, Holy Spirit. I got You. I see what You’re saying to me. It’s easy for me to understand the second sentence, to see how that verse in Romans speaks to difficult and extraordinary circumstances. That is a great comfort in times of struggle.
But to see that verse in light of the mundane? The seasons of quiet and slow and rest? Earth-shattering.
Every mundane moment is working together for my good according to His will and purposes in Christ Jesus. Every single moment matters in the scope of eternity. Not one of them is in vain.
No matter how many times I push the swing.
No matter how many fights I break up.
No matter how much time I spend watching my kids play, simply being present for them.
No matter how many times I stack the same Duplos over and over again.
No matter how many diapers I change or crumbs I sweep.
No matter how many snacks I distribute.
Those moments are just as purposeful, just as valuable, just as working-for-my-good as the moments when I pen a new blog post, publish a book, have a great discipleship conversation, go on a fabulous date with my amazing husband, or learn some new truth. . . each and every one. Each and every one matters.
God sees my faithfulness in the mundane moments. The more I press into the mundane rather than trying to find another rat race to put myself in, the more I embrace the quiet rather than filling my head with any source of “noise” input I can find, the more He can do with those moments.
Friends, I don’t know what season you’re in. Maybe you are in a season of no rest, racing from one thing to the next. Maybe, like me, you’re in a season of slow, catching your breath between busy seasons. Maybe you’re somewhere in between. Whatever the case, remember that each and every moment of your day matters to God. None of them are in vain. If you are in Christ Jesus, then He is using each moment to accomplish your good according to His purposes.
Let that help you be glad in today, no matter what today holds!
