This singular image alone is insufficient to illustrate completely the disaster that was my house today. But let it serve as a suggestion to your imagination as to what the rest of the picture looked like: apple slices littering the kitchen floor; dripped water color trails leading from the table to the sink; various pieces of cutlery strewn about willy-nilly as the ten-month-old unloaded the dishwasher (a favorite of his hobbies along with sorting through our trash can and emptying every package of wipes he can get his hands on). Not to mention the dried Ramen noodle on the carpet (pretty sure that’s still there) and the almost completely emptied Christmas boxes in our two-thirds decorated living room.

But more than wishing I had pictures of all of these messes so that you could more fully understand what I mean when I say ‘disaster’, what I really wish is that I had documentation of what this house looked like last week. Because let me just tell you: last week I was a house-keeping goddess. I’m talking every single room of my house, spotless, at least twice a day (morning and night…ahh the moments when the short people sleep) all at the same. time. This is not a drill.

I’m talking no laundry in the laundry baskets, I’m talking floors vacuumed and mopped, I’m talking rooms having been deep cleaned and de-cluttered. It was a dream come true. And I reveled in it. Cleaning, last week, was top priority. I was determined never to see a mess again without immediately swooping in on the threat and neutralizing it. It’d been a project eight months in the works, this nearly perfectly clean house. It started with a massive overhaul and de-junking in the summer and had culminated the week prior in the vacuumed edges of this paradise I was now at “leisure” to enjoy. I say “leisure” because it was anything but leisurely to jump on messes in real time. Do you know what real time looks like with four, tiny human beings who’s entire life mission is to destroy my creations?

But I loved it! I loved walking in the door and seeing a spotless living room, I loved waking up and wandering the neat and vacuumed hallways, I loved being able to find every single thing I needed instantly because it had been put back where it belonged, I loved doing only one load of laundry a day, putting it all away as soon as it came out of the dryer and not having to do anymore laundry because there literally wasn’t any.

I loved it.

Then, it all came crashing down on me in one fail swoop: the flu. It hit me like a ton of bricks…one moment I thought I was feeling queasy because I’d skipped breakfast in preparation for afternoon Thanksgiving feasting; the next minute I was so nauseated, I couldn’t move and spent the entire night awake and puking. (I kid you not, I was awake until 5:30 in the morning, puking every ten minutes. It was The Worst)

Shem got sick, too, and pulled his ankle the same weekend during a turkey bowl because the universe likes to watch us squirm. So you can guess what the first thing to go was. No, not our children. They’re still here but it was a close call*. No, the first thing to go was my beautiful, immaculate, I-will-never-let-you-get-dirty-again house.

And honestly, it hasn’t been the same ever since. Oh sure, we’ve cleaned up at night and de-cluttered and it hasn’t been a holy wreck the entire time, but the spotless utopia we’d been living in up until that point hasn’t been near the same caliber ever since the flu. I know we’re only three days past being knocked flat on our butts by the thing, but here’s the truth: I’m actively not choosing that blissful order this week. Because I’m actively pursuing other things and there simply isn’t space for Everything.

On Sunday I had a private devotional while my kids napped and in the process I mapped out some goals for the coming week; what I wanted more of, what I wanted less of, what my goals were, etc. and I wrote a list that looked something like this:

-Less social media; More creativity
-Less television; More reading
-Less cleaning; More intentional time with my babies

I know we’re only a day in, but that top picture should give you an idea as to where my priorities were today. And they just weren’t as devoted to my house. They couldn’t be because instead, we were busy painting and making homemade play dough and then using our Christmas cookie cutters to make some pretty stunning Christmas scenes and we were reading stories and telling stories and listening to Samuel’s fabulous ideas for the 25 Days of Kindness advent we’re going to put together this year and rocking the baby and teaching him “Itsy, Bitsy Spider” and getting into tickle fights with…pretty much everyone, and singing Christmas carols and watching Christmas movies and teaching our brains how to like fish and brussel sprouts. And there just isn’t time for Everything.

With a few notable exceptions, you can have anything you want in this world; a spotless house, a million dollars, a thousand friends on facebook, a thriving career, a huge family, a healthy diet, a bangin’ bod, good relationships with your kids, a second language, a third language, all the languages, …you get my point. You get to pick what you want out of life and whether or not you’re doing it intentionally, you are picking everyday. Maybe you’re unintentionally choosing to set the world record for fastest binge session of every season of Doctor Who (guuuuilty) or to eat chocolate everyday (that’s more of an intentional choice for me, tbh) or to become the foremost expert on That One Family from My 600 Pound Life, but whether intentional or not, you’re making decisions with your time that are leading you somewhere.

Intention is just steering.

Now, I enjoy living in a clean house (a cruel irony that I also really enjoy having and raising baby children because the two are almost entirely mutually exclusive) and so some of my time will almost always be dedicated to that end. And I’m at peace with that. I’m at peace in the knowledge that the time I choose to devote to keeping my house at an acceptable-to-me level of cleanliness will necessarily take time from something else and the amount of time I choose to dedicate might even change on a week to week basis, depending on the needs of my children and myself. I’m at peace with the fact that some weeks might necessitate deep breathing as I survey the state of disaster surrounding us and am working on listing the less visible accomplishments I’ve achieved in the course of the day (like listening with all my heart to a detailed blow-by-blow of what The Oldest created in Minecraft).

I’m also learning to make peace with the fact that in this season of my life, the intentions with which I steer my life are somewhat per-determined based on choices I’ve already made (like. procreating). And so in order to steer my life and the lives of these cute boys towards a destination I’ve always envisioned for us, I have to use my time for certain, non-negotiable things. I’m trying to make peace with the fact that things like cleaning are negotiable while things like… teaching my children to negotiate with kindness, for example, are not. Sometimes the thing I think I really want (like a spotless house) might not always be the thing I actually want (like respectful sons who know how to negotiate peacefully as men).

We’re playing the long game here, people.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step; so watch your step.”
-Jeffry R. Holland

Steer intentionally. You’re on the journey anyway, might as well enjoy the destination!

*just kidding