The Graceful Art of Defrazzling - for Mothers
"I wipe my baby's chin with my college diploma and wonder, 'How
did I ever get here?'" -- Joy Rose from the band "Housewives on
Prozac" I'm sure any mom on the planet can relate to that quote
and the sense of exhaustion and bewilderment that it implies.
Let's face it, ladies, after cooking, cleaning, caring,
chauffeuring, and "career-ing" we're pretty frazzled -
physically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. We
dream of lives we don't believe we will ever be able to live,
long to go away on a luxury vacation we will probably never be
able to afford, or struggle to just put life on "pause" long
enough to refuel before we have to tackle that next mountain of
laundry. Unfortunately, those dreams look pretty hopeless, this
side of the stack of dirty dishes in the sink. The Graceful Art
of Defrazzling means learning to live our lives in moments and
seasons. Living in moments means that we must learn to take
small amounts of time each day to refresh our souls, laugh,
breathe deeply, express gratitude, and rejoice over our children
and husbands - especially on the bad days! We need to look for
natural pauses in our days: waiting at a stop light or in a
grocery store line; while we wait for the pot to boil; right
after the kids go down for their naps - and other little breaks
in our day - to take a brief vacation from drudgery. We need to
use these moments to stop and look for small, present things to
cherish: the golden curls on our toddler's head; the warm
sunshine outside; the sound of children's laughter; the feel of
a baby's soft skin; the taste of a perfectly brewed cup of
quality tea. We need to use little pauses in our day to take
baby steps toward our bigger goals like tucking five dollars
away for future dreams, skimming great books for deeper
inspiration, or glancing at pictures of our ideal life and
dreaming a little. We may not be able to get away for a month
long vacation, but if we take little five-minute vacations every
day, we will find ourselves more relaxed and available for our
families. We may not have time or money to become a world class
professional pastry chef right now, but we can get a book out of
the library on gourmet desserts and throw a surprise together
for tonight's supper. A week on a beach may be an impossible
dream, but we can drop the kids off at friend's house and go sit
on a park bench in the sunshine for an hour. We need to look for
moments, but we must also live in seasons. Living in seasons
means we need to remember that what we are experiencing now is
not what we will experience forever. When the kids are really
young and we're not getting any sleep, knowing that this is
temporary is helpful. We may not have time for anything right
now except for survival - but if we're using our moments to
prepare for the next season while we learn to get through this
one, things will be different. Seasons enable us to cope with
today, but also look to the future. They enable us to see past
the spilled supper on the floor ,and the terrible two's, to a
time when things will be calmer. Living in seasons also enables
us to take the time we need to create and cherish special
moments with our family. Instead of rushing from feeding the
baby to cleaning out the basement, or brushing off our child's
request to "come and see!" so that we can get dinner started,
we'll realize that this season is but a brief drop in the bucket
of time and that it will soon be over. Dinner and cleaning can
usually wait while we connect in a special way with our family
members. We need to recognize the season we're in, and learn to
deal with each season in a way that creates a solid foundation
for the next one. So the next time you're wearily folding
laundry, give thanks for the person each item belongs to, say a
prayer for them, cherish a special memory you have of them - or
plan to create a new one, and remember that "this too, shall
pass". This is the graceful art of De-frazzling - for mothers.
Darlene Hull, www.mom-defrazzler.com