Life

Life is meant to be lived …
not managed,
not controlled,
not screamed,
not stressed,
not hurried,
not guilt-ridden,
not regretted,
not scripted,
not consumed by distractions, big or small, obvious or subtle.
Life is meant to be lived … and sometimes we lose our way.

Those words, that I read over at Hands Free Mama, resonate so incredibly much with me in my current realm. And if I'm really honest, which I always try to be on here, the words that jump off the page and smack me in the kisser are "screamed, stressed, hurried and guilt-ridden." Why? Because there's always, ALWAYS more to do in these lives of ours. I say "ours" because I'm pretty confident that I'm not the only one who teeters between wishing we had more hours in the day and being thankful that the good Lord limits us to 24 hours a day to fill with the important, the beautiful, the ugly, the mandatory, the frivolous and the lazy. There's just so much "stuff" to do that one person cannot fit into one day, and even though I know this as a rational being, I still stumble into the hurried, stressed, yelling, frantic maniac that I can become if I don't keep one eye focused inward.

Just recently on a ride to a funeral home for a visitation with the Hubs and the Munch, I shared an inner struggle of mine as a new mom. And not realizing how fitting my timing was, I said "I've been struggling lately with weekends. Part of me just wants to rest and stay home and get everything done around the house that we need too, while the other part of me wants to be out as a family, exploring and making memories." We chatted a bit more about it on the 40 minute drive and by the end of the conversation, I asked if he'd want to take a quick road trip the following Sunday to get away for a bit. Just the three of us. And so we did.

You see, there's a million and one projects on our plate at home. We have things to fix, things to paint, ALWAYS things to clean, etc... I clean our house, whether surface or deep, all the time and it never seems to allow me to catch up. There's always new dust. New clutter. Shoes by the front door. Salt ALL over the counter because the Hubs views salt dispersion as a full-contact sport, apparently (love you;). Bathrooms to clean. Baby toys to pick up. And so on. BUT I don't want that to be my existence on our coveted weekends. I want to load the baby up and explore. Even if it means something as simple as hitting up Trader Joe's.

Thanks to the Hubs giving up a Sunday during March Madness (which I didn't even realize until we ate a place with TVs for lunch, sorry!), the 3 amigos piled into the car and headed into the suburbs to shop. Yep, the Hubs gave up a basketball watching marathon to hit up Trader Joe's, World Market, etc... He took one for the team big time and I'm grateful. Was it the best memories we've ever made? Not by a long shot. What it WAS though was a chance to shut the door at home on the commitments, the dust bunnies, the laundry and the schedules. We got away and we made ourselves a priority over the home and the stress and hurriedness and it was everything I hoped it be.

You see, when it's all said and done and someone's driving to a funeral home for my visitation, the last thing I want them to chat about is that I was always on the go, a dust and clutter free mom who got so much stuff done. Sure, those moms are nice, but that's not what I want to be about. I want to be about road trips and adventures and memories and car dancing. And if I can find a good balance, hopefully the clutter of happy memories will outnumber the number of cluttered shoes at our front door. And if not? I'm okay with that too.