I’m the sort of person who loves orderliness. I love my plans, and my routines. Schedules and orderliness are great for enabling me to, as a keeper at home, have more time for the things which I value most, namely time with my husband and children. I’m not someone who is naturally neat and tidy. For me, it takes considerable physical, mental, and emotional effort to get my house looking the way I think it should look. I have friends, and even a mother, who all do this so effortlessly, but I’m sadly not wired that way. I’m a natural born, easily-distracted slob who works hard to be reformed of those predispositions.
It’s taken me years to finally fall into a routine I’m comfortable with, which works well for our family dynamic, especially given that my husband has a very irregular work schedule. For a few years now, things have clipped along nicely, and this routine has brought much peace and productivity. Now that much of this routine has become habit in my life, I had finally gotten to a point where it no longer involved too much mental and emotional effort to make it happen. Most days it just did.
And then, an unavoidable wrench was thrown in my routine just before this past Thanksgiving.
My in-laws, who live nearly two hours away from us, became ill. During the recovery, they let us know that they both were diagnosed several years ago with Alzheimer’s Disease, and had been hiding it all this time. My mother-in-law also has a brain tumor.
Time that used to be spent enjoying my family or doing the major housework on Saturday mornings, was now spent making the drive to their house on many weekends, or trying to research help for them online or on the phone. My husband became stressed and needed extra attention, spending much of his rare free time seemingly with a phone growing out of his ear, talking with his brother (who cares for them full time) helping arrange medical things, trying to calm one or both of his parents down, or needing to calm down me after a fresh installment of verbal abuse from my in-laws. It seems that their disease had removed the filter that used to prevent them from saying to me what they were thinking about me. Most of the time I could just smile and ignore it, but every now and then, it stung.
The children seemed to need extra love and attention, as they were upset at how dramatically their grandparents had changed, and how scary those changes were. One of our daughters has had nightmares about us also getting this horrible disease. So, for the first time in years, I’ve been up at night comforting crying children, as they echoed a fear that was also on my heart, causing me to lose sleep too. I spent more nights than I can count unable to sleep, paralyzed by the fear of one day having Alzheimer’s or seeing my dear husband, whose parents, aunt, and grandparents have all had it, develop it too. Our already tight budget was being further stretched by our frequent drives to the city, and related expenses.
I found myself becoming quite resentful of the whole situation interfering with my ability to be the mother and keeper at home I wanted to be.
One day, as I was trying to catch up on housework and other things that had been left undone after another weekend of running around, I found myself in a bad mood, sulking about this situation. I hated that my house wasn’t as clean as I’d prefer, and that so many things I value had fallen by the wayside. “Lord,” I cried, “You know my heart is to be home, not running around most weekends or on the phone dealing with all of this stuff!” Then it hit me…the Lord reminded me that part of being at home is making myself available for family when it’s necessary.
The Lord Jesus also reminded me of something He had to teach me when my children were younger. We have our schedules, routines, and orderliness in place to have the freedom to spend more time where it counts. The schedules and routines aren’t our master, demanding to be done, but our servants, helping us complete the necessary smaller everyday tasks so we’ll be able to spend time however we must spend it.
In our case, the routines needed to be re-arranged to work with the trips south a few times a month, and the added emotional energy I was using trying to be a helper for my husband in this trying situation, and nurturing my children as they struggled with this, until we are able to fall into a new routine for the weeks when we will spend the weekend with my in-laws.
Schedules and homemaking routines are great to help us, but need to be flexible when it is time for us to help others.
Kimberly
Just wanted to say…
that I really was encouraged by what you shared
thank you
Helen
Thank you, Helen. I’m glad it was a blessing.
Everyone, if you think of it, do pray for my mother in law. She’s in the hospital yet again as of last night, with a high fever of unknown origins.
Great post Kimberly, been feeling the same here. My older daughters at that stage of really being of service to others and our oldest son is now grown though still here until marriage. There are still little ones here too but things are different every day. Our families change and wow, it does a number on Momma! You are right we need to grow with those changes and treasure the moment we are in. As always dear sister, Love you!
I have learned this lesson recently, too, when my best-laid plans were shattered. Thanks for the reminder.
Kim,
This is a lesson that has been “thrown” in my face recently. I am a very scheduled person and because of circumstances have had to “let go and let God!” Thanks for great words of wisdom – as usual… you are a blessing!
Thank you! I’ve needed to have my own words preach back at me today
Thank you for sharing this. We are at the beginning of a similar journey with my mother-in-law. This article has been an answer to prayer as I am trying to figure out how to help my husband, my mother-in-law and still parent and homeschool our 2 young children. Reading this has been blessing in my life. Thank you again.