when I try to do "all the things" part 1
- Keelie Schroeder
- Jul 9, 2019
- 9 min read
Just a quick caveat, or two, before we start here today. I want to remind you of the essence of this blog...A Typical Motherhood. Which truly should be written, Atypical Motherhood...meaning deviant, different, unrepresentative. If you liked my first few post GREAT! This one has a little bit of a different flavor.
Number 2: This topic is going to be split into two posts. Mainly because I want to keep this sort of short and sweet but without taking away the importance of this focus on trying to do everything...here we go!
Recently I have heard the phrase "all the things"...I don't know where it originated and maybe I am a little behind the trend but when people talk about doing "all the things" I fully understand what they are meaning, as I am sure you do. It is a somewhat vague expression but I think it sums up well what we are aiming for each day...accomplishing "all the things".
Last year I had a feeling of unsatisfaction in my life, something felt like it was missing. This came after my daughter was born and in hindsight was probably more of a "transition season" than true unsatisfaction. But I will explain more about that at a later date.
I had lost my sense of passion and started searching for it again. Subsequently, I jumped on the achieve "all the things" wagon...I wholly embraced this philosophy and worked diligently to truly achieve a.t.t. I aspired to be the best mom, wife, homemaker, woman...you name it. I was impressed by the amazing things that other moms were capable of doing with their children. The glamorous lives they were creating and displaying. I essentially wanted to be a super fit, organic eating, ultra-organized, career driven, super mommy. I saw these women on Instagram and Facebook that were entrepreneurs and truly crushing it (or at least on their feed they wanted me to think they were crushing it). I thought...why not me?! I decided to join the growing community of women starting their own business and hit the ground running. I had this dream that this business I was creating could become more than just a side hustle...I wanted it to be able to support my family and make enough money that I could step away from my 9-5, inflexible career as a teacher and be a work at home momma that could do a.t.t.
I read (and listened through Audible) all the personal growth books, listened to the podcasts and sound clouds during any free moment. I was mirroring what I saw these other successful women doing. Everything kept telling me..."You can make life happen...you can achieve what you want in life...if you put in the time and hours, you can make any life you want". When I got stuck in a rut, there was immense support from others telling me those identical messages again. So I'd dust myself off and give it another go. I had a vision of the life I wanted for my family and I was determined to get it. No matter what.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Can we just pause for a moment and chat about this?
Just take a second and hear me out...
4 Things happened during those months...
At the beginning... I felt so empowered. I was on a track that I thought could get me where I wanted in life. I had the mindset of "I decide my future." I was going to make the life I wanted.
As a result... my focus was always on growing my business. During my full-time job as a teacher, I was squeezing in emails and Facebook messages where ever I could. Between classes, while kids were working on independent work, lunch, basically any free second I had. At home, I had the same mindset. I justified by assuring myself I was "working". Whether it was creating the perfect post to promote a product or making sure I was updating my story on Instagram so people stayed interested in my content, I was constantly connected. Ironically, the effect of all that "connectivity"...distance. Distance from my job, distance from my kids, distance from my husband. The best way to describe what was happening is this...every "yes" I said to the new world I was trying to create, was a resounding "no" to my family and the current life I was living.
Then I heard... a woman speaking on a Sound Cloud call. She spoke about how much she sacrificed to grow her business. She missed birthday parties and little league games, dance recitals and bedtime kisses, all in the name of "creating" a better life for her family. I will confess, this registered as a red flag to me at the time but the mindset of this community kept encouraging me: "Trust the process...trust the women who have gone before you...they have been in your shoes, made the sacrifices, and look at them now!"
Finally, I had clarity... I started reading a book that was recommended to me by a fellow Christian called Uncluttered by Courtney Ellis. In a nutshell, the book sheds light on the epidemic surrounding us...the urge to fill our feelings of scarcity with overflowing abundance. How we strive and labor tirelessly to acquire a.t.t. we feel we want when really there is only one element we require. I felt a void in my life and because of that void, I looked to the world to tell me how to fill it, what I should want to want out of life. In this book, Courtney explains that there is only one way to satisfy these unsatisfiable parts of our lives. It was the one thing I was not doing. I saw clearly for the first time in months.
The one who loves silver is never satisfied with silver, and whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with income... -Ecclesiastes 5:10
The Lesson
Ever heard the saying "you are what you eat"? I am sure you have. Well, the same thing goes for other things we consume. What we read. What we watch. How we utilize our time in general. What goes in, comes out. This might make some people upset and remember this was just my experience...but this culture I started to become a part of feeds a lot of false hope.
Because I am a child of God, I need to recognize that I am not solely responsible for my future. I was put on this earth to do the Lord's work. He calls me. He appoints me. My work should image his love and his grace. The world loves to tell me that I can make my own happiness if I just put in the time and hours. I am here to tell you that having "all the things" is impossible. Like I said above every "yes" is a door-slamming-in-your-face "no" to something else.
My husband is reading an intriguing book right now that I hope to read as well...Essentialism by Greg McKeown. He shared with me something he read recently that wholly ties with what I stated above. Greg writes,
"You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything".
Is your head tilted to the side right now like a perplexed puppy? Mine was the first time my husband read me that line. Let's break it apart.
"You cannot overestimate..."
meaning you can't acknowledge enough...
"the unimportance..."
how NOT important things are
My paraphrase...
You can't acknowledge enough how not important most things are. You can't ignore the unimportance of practically everything.
This my friends is exactly what I was NOT doing. I was trying to be everything to everybody and as a result, I was bringing less of my true self to the table.
You have to understand that growing up, I always saw my mom and grandmother hard at work on something...weeding, vacuuming, cleaning, cooking, entertaining. They both would be up at the crack of dawn and the last to bed because they were always meeting everyone else's needs. Mine included. So clearly, when I became a mom and even when my husband and I were first married, I tried to emulate them. I was putting so much effort into doing everything for everybody all while maintaining my own sanity.
I am the first to admit that I can't do it. I don't know how they were able to do literally everything for us for all those years...not to mention look immaculate doing it...and not lose their minds completely.
I believe that motherhood has both stretched me to almost breaking...picture Stretch Armstrong trying to span from one end of a football field to the other...while at the same time, it has given me opportunities to slow down. I think these moments that called me to slow down often wore the mask of inconvenience but they were really God's little nudges (or huge shoves) to use to just take a second and STOP! Let me give you a few examples...
Breastfeeding. I know now all of us do this but if you bottle feed it can be the same idea. When I first started nursing my son it was soooo hard to just sit and basically do nothing. I would get antsy and maybe reach for my phone (tried not to watch TV) but ladies, it was sooo hard for me! I am very independent and as I said above, I never saw the women in my family take a break. This to me felt like I was taking a break...which I was...but it did not feel productive...which DUH it totally was because I was ummm feeding my child! After number 2 came around I WELCOMED these nursing sessions...I saw the design God had for us moms. He knows we need times to pause in motherhood and although nursing does not always feel like it, often times it is just the mental and physical recharge we need.
Sleep. Let me be clear here, I am probably talking more about the lack of sleep rather than the restful sleep we all day dream about. When your child won't sleep anywhere but with you. This was and sometimes still is my son. For the first year of his life, he spent most nap times and bedtimes sleeping with me, my mom or our heaven-sent babysitter who held him during his whole nap. Yes, this is a huge inconvenience, but if we look at it from a grace-filled lens, I think it has similar advantages as I named above. Though seeing them in the moment can be very, very hard because all you want to do is sleep without a kid hanging off your boob or getting kicked in the stomach...to think we thought that would be done with after birth! HA!
What the Gospel Teaches
Ecclesiastes teaches largely about the futility or emptiness of living for the world.
When I considered all that I had accomplished and what I had labored to achieve, I found everything to be futile and a pursuit of the wind. There was nothing to be gained under the sun. -Ecclesiastes 2:11
Studying this book of the Bible can be slightly disheartening. It feels at times that Solomon (who church historians believe wrote this book) is saying "nothing is worth doing here on earth because we all will die eventually and we can't take anything with us when we die...so what's the point". But that's not at all what he intended. He was trying to say that putting your identity and life into worldly possessions will leave you feeling hollow and your life fragmented. Like a hamster wheel, always moving but going nowhere.
Yup. Again. That's what I was doing. I was giving too much attention to things in my life that ultimately are not important. It was not satisfying my feelings of "never enough" because as Brene Brown puts it so eloquently, the cure to living a life of scarcity and feeling like you need to accomplish "all of the things" is knowing your life, just how it is, just how God designed it...is enough.
McKeown also writes extensively about how you can have too many priorities. You can overvalue parts of your life and call them "significant" which ultimately makes nothing important. REALLY? You mean I can have too many parts of my life that are important??? Leading me back to, "You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything."
List of things that are truly important to me...
My God
My husband
My children
How I grew
I used to hear the world harshly telling me that I should want to want more. I should want to BE more. I should make myself INTO more. Hustle a little harder and you'll make the life you want. But the world is broken. When we look to scripture we see that after the fall...when Adam and Eve chose the fruit of knowledge rather than the fruit of the Lord...the world became ridden with sin. But through the redemption of Jesus, we find hope, we find grace. He should be my compass that discerns where my time and energy will be best spent...asking whether ________ (you fill in the blank) glorifies his mission for me. And let me tell you when I started to look at late night nursing sessions and rocking a toddler to sleep (for what felt like hours) through that "fill in the blank" statement, and it was like the grace of God filled me and equip me right there in those moments and the tasks felt like a no brainer rather that a burden.
Clarification
I do not want this to be a personal attack on anyone who has made sacrifices in the name of furthering their careers. This narrative is one woman's perspective and journey towards Jesus (and minimalism which we'll talk more about in part 2!). I am on a mission to be of service and encourage women to listen to the truth the Lord is whispering to them. That nagging feeling they have when they say "yes" but want to say "no". Maybe for some women, the mission God has for you is to be a part of the world I dipped my feet into...I just invite you to examine the path your currently walking. If there is a space in your heart that aches and you don't know why...I just want to plant the seeds of wonder. Wonder if what was missing in my life could also be what is missing in yours. A longing that can only be filled by Jesus.
Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. -Matthew 11:28-30
And as always...
Be empowered. Be centered. Be intentional.
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