Water the plants, read the books, drink the coffee, do the small things.
I tend to default to making lists of events in life, checking boxes as events happen. New job, check. Wedding, check. Baby, check. And yet, checking boxes totally bypasses the whole point of life and the lessons being learned.
I've had multiple conversations in the past few weeks with women in various intervals of life. Single woman figuring out new jobs. Single women wondering when their time is to have a marriage and children. Wives figuring out marriage and how to build a thriving marriage. Young moms in the midst of changing diapers and feeding babies. Moms of older kids trying to make the right decisions for their families. I look at my life as I transition out of a full time job and into being a stay at home mom, healing from having a baby and resting in the tension of a postpartum body I struggle with.
Common threads weave through our conversations - we are all asking questions, grappling with doubt, embracing the uncertainty, muddling through the mundane, and clinging to hope. There is no one-size-fits-all life.
It. Is. Hard.
In the past few weeks of creating a new home routine, I've been building in time to read books. Every time I sit down to read, the doubts start creeping. You could be doing better things with your time. Why are you wasting it on frivolity? There is laundry that needs done, you should do that instead. Why is the biography on Jane Austen more important than cleaning your home? The doubts get louder when I start to analyze what I'm reading - as if self-help books are a better choice the a novel or a biography.
And every time I have to fight back the doubts with Taking time to read is a discipline. It disciplines me to focus on one thing at a time. It opens my mind to new ideas and sparks creativity. When I walk in new ideas and creativity, I live life more purposefully and am better able to do life well.
Each item added to my weekly list is the result of purposeful choices and learning how to be disciplined. In my life, these items look like preparing cold brew concentrate each week, meal prepping, writing a blog post, getting outside and moving my body, doing laundry (completely to being put away), reading my Bible, talking to and playing with Jael, organizing the house and putting wayward pieces away.
In her book Fighting Forward, Hannah Brencher has a chapter titled "Take the Vitamins." Here is an excerpt from it (pg. 41) -
"If you're like me, you may feel pressure from a society that looks like everyone is a finished product and you're just the half-assembled desk from IKEA. You may see people at the 'top level' and shame yourself for not being where they are. But let me tell you the truth: to get to the top of the ladder, you start at the bottom rung.
The daily vitamin. The printing of the recipe. The first workout. Genesis 1.
And then you take those small things and put them on repeat. Discipline stacks up, and those results will come with enough time and enough daily application. Eventually your feelings of being overwhelmed will start to fade and you'll miss fewer days and all the small things will morph into habits. And those habits will set you up for rhythms. And those rhythms become anthems you know by heart. And those anthems have the potential to power you into such greatness you cannot even fathom right now."
When I read that at the beginning of the year, I had no idea how much I would need those words six months in. The permission they gave me to tend to the small things. The realization that the small things are the important things.
Getting up at 3am to breastfeed Jael matters. Taking time to read a book, whether 10 pages or 50, matters. Cutting up vegetables for food matters. Going for a daily walk outdoors matters. Folding laundry matters. Taking time to drink coffee and talk with a friend matters. Doing my job well to the best of my ability matters.
My friend Rose weeds every Wednesday. She tends to the plants weekly so that she doesn't have a huge day in the garden sorting through a mess of weeds. Just like plants need tended to weekly, so do small things in our lives.
Start small - Thank you, Kendra Adachi a.k.a. The Lazy Genius. In her book The Lazy Genius Way, Kendra writes, "We don't give enough credit to all that goes before, but that's precisely why small steps matter: they're doing invisible work, and we can trust that process."
I have been practicing taking the small steps to be a finisher. Hanging the shirt up immediately after I take it off at the end of the day. Changing the trash bag when I place the last diaper in it that fills it up. Sorting the mail as soon as I get it out of the box - throwing away the junk mail and dealing with the rest. Emptying the coffee grounds after I make a pot of drip coffee. All these little steps are easy to ignore until I have a table full of junk mail to deal with, want to make coffee and mold is in the coffee pot because it's been sitting since the last time I made coffee, or I have a guest bed full of clothing that needs put away.
We have permission to do small things.
Intentional tending yields great rewards in the long run.
The invisible work matters.
Small things on repeat blooms into growth.
A little quality time goes a long way.
So does a phone call to a loved one.
Or drinking a cup of coffee on the deck.
Or looking into your kid's eyes and smiling and affirming them.
Spending time in the Word of God prunes our hearts for the day.
"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies." - Mother Teresa
This is the good work, I frequently remind myself as I build my house with wisdom - learning to die to selfishness, love my husband better, intentionally love and train Jael, and keep doing and dreaming to make a difference in my home and community.
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