The fruits of my labor

The family room rearranged. It feels a lot better!

I'm not very good at observing Lent when I'm pregnant. I get wimpy. Food (dessert) items never seem like a sacrifice, since we rarely have dessert. 

So, I thought on the virtues. It didn't take long to see the glaring vice of laziness. I never finished the day's dishes before bed, I washed laundry but didn't fold or take it upstairs and put it away. Every time Zach told me his friends were coming over to practice adjusting, I cringed. My kitchen was a mess. My table was cluttered. God forbid they needed to use the bathroom, because not only was the bathroom a disaster, the family room was covered in laundry (clean laundry, but laundry nonetheless). For a while I blamed it on pregnancy, and having a toddler, but I can't use that excuse my whole life. God-willing I will spend the next many years pregnant, or with a new baby and toddlers.

Ignore the craft table. That's still a work in progress.

 We're oddballs here - we're young, married, and we're expecting our second child while the breadwinner is attending graduate school full-time and I'm a stay at home mama. Society is so discouraging towards marriage and children, it finally hit me that every time his friends saw my messy house, I wasn't helping the cause. I was hurting it. Who wants to get married and have kids if it means their house is going to be a wreck all of the time? I love my life, and I would never want anything different, but I'm discouraged by my own example!

 If that wasn't enough motivation to make a change, laziness is a vice. A vice I don't want to have! My Lenten resolution was to stop being lazy. To wash my dishes before going to bed. To finish my laundry. To get rid of the clutter around my home. 

I had to change how I think about keeping my home clean. Cleaning isn't something you do when you absolutely have to, you do it every single day because it's just part of your job. I used to get up at 5am and drive an hour to work to serve people, and part of serving them was keeping the store clean. I don't get up at 5am now, but my job is still that of serving. I'm serving my family, and through that I am serving society. I would have been fired if I didn't perform all of my duties at Chick-fil-A, and while I can't be fired from being a wife and mother, I can make them unhappy by not trying to overcome my vices.

I wasn't perfect every day, but I tried. Now I get my dishes done 95% of the time, and my laundry has made it upstairs. I do have a lot of clothes that still need to be sorted, probably many will be given to Salvation Army or consigned. But I don't feel so stressed. I come downstairs and feel calm. That calmness gives me the courage to go back upstairs and start tackling the clothes.

I ended up saying a lot more than I intended to. For some people this is probably a no-brainer (y'all are lucky!). For people like me, I hope it's some kind of encouragement.

I hope everyone had a fruitful Lent. 

Love,

Jess

PS: I thought about taking before pictures, but I don't have enough humility. :)