Quiet Mind, Quiet Home
She sits quietly in her quiet home, rising early before the day, before the family she loves, to just breathe in the home.
She sits quietly in her quiet home, staying up late after the day, after the family she loves is abed, just to breathe in the home.
She sits quietly in her quiet home, staying inside, inside while the family she loves plays outside, just to breathe in the home.
HearthKeeper. Homemaker. Wife.
The home is more than four walls, more than the things that say us, more than good food and good cheer. The home is all those things and more. The home is the familiar, the home is a hug, the home is safety and adventure, the home is beauty, a place to be and to be seen. It starts in her heart and mind, as she sits quietly, and then diffuses out of her into the walls, the things, the good, the familiar, the hug, the safe adventure, the beauty, the seeing. It is both her calling and her delight.
This is us. This is ours. By birthright, by license, by providence, by gifts.
Struggles abound in this work. Thistles and thorns scratch our hands, rip our clothes, destroy what we have built. That too starts in our hearts and minds and can diffuse like smog, like killing gas, into our homes, choking, blinding, breaking. Calm may evade us. Anxieties haunt us in the night and join hands with the siren song of complaining during the day. We have eyes only for what is demanded of us and never for what has been done for us. A world never at rest weighs us down, and all we see is work, work, work, and never the seasons, never the hymns, never the slumber.
She sits quietly in her home, knowing this work is not salvific. This work isn’t the root of life, it is the fruit of Christ’s work in her. She sits quietly in her home, breathing, listening, and training. She arms herself with the truth, with the right, with the good. She climbs into the frontline trenches with her Captain, her King, her brother, and she follows him.
HearthKeeper. Homemaker. Wife. Dwelling.
She is the Church to his Christ, the mirror to the world, the metaphor lived out. She sits quietly in her home. Quietly, but she is never out of the fight. Never out of the fight that starts in her heart and mind and diffuses into her home.
Sisters! This is our battlefield, this is our war. The children, the dirty diapers, the imperfect husbands, the struggling budget, the maintenance work, the upheaval, the rut, the anxiety, the complaining, the dust, and dirt, and chaos. It may look like a simple house in a typical suburb, or out in the country, or in the city, but it is a battlefield, a war in our hearts and minds, a now-not-yet life.
She sits quietly in her quiet home, for every sense of calm, every moment of comfort in a dark and broken world is a lantern shining bright for her Lord.
HearthKeeper, lighting the way back home.
This beautiful image of calm and quiet isn’t happenstance, accidental, or organic. It is something for which we have to work, labor, and strive.
I have this dream every year of taking a day or two ‘off’ and assessing my home from front to back noting projects, dreams, goals, needs, and such, followed by list-making, brain dumps, and goal setting. I always feel that post-holiday is a great time for this because the upending of my schedule, my routine, has given me breathing space away from my routine. The holidays refresh my perspective.
And, there is something magical and inspiring about a New Year. Sally Clarkson—in her book co-written with her daughter, The Lifegiving Home—talks about how her husband would watch the kids on January 1 so that she could go sit in a coffee shop all day and plan their year. As a very dedicated planner, that sounds like heaven. But every year, something comes up. Taxes start yelling loudly. My home feels chaotic. I get sick. Something always reduces my grand plan of one or two days to one or two hours of frantic brain dumping, leaving me feeling like I started the year half-cocked.
I want to take that natural ‘new year’ desire and use it. It’s a great thing to use the holiday as an impetus for taking in your home as a whole and making plans. This year, I feel closer to doing that than any year before, or maybe I just have a better grasp of my home and myself.
2020 has been the year of the better grasp. I’ve fought a knockdown, drag-out mental battle to learn to set realistic goals and To-Do lists. My huge gain is Tasks, not Time. My huge gain is calm. Calm in my heart and calm in my mind and calm in my home. Not perfectly, but it’s there.
During my tenure as a boutique co-owner, when I drove my body to the point of breakdown, I was time-oriented because I had to be, but I let that necessity become my mistress. My whole life was a frantic I’m late, I’m late, I’m late mantra in my head. I’m being literal. In my head was and is a voice that chants that I’m late and I need to hurry up. I pushed to get more done in a shorter timeframe and berated myself for things taking too long to finish. I was a panic-stricken slave to the clock. For over 15 years, I lived this way in our boutiques and I lived this way in our home.
With Price’s help, I started to see the harm I caused myself and my family by always having my eyes on the clock and my body in a constant flight, fight, or freeze mode. It infused our home with a ratcheted-up level of anxiety and stress and then took away my physical ability to take care of my home. How you think about life affects everything around you.
Enter Task, not Time.
I had to change my thoughts. My mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual life demanded I change before I let anxiety and stress make me useless and helpless. Each time I glanced at the clock and thought, I’m so behind, I repeated to myself, no you’re not, you’re at the right time exactly because it’s task, not time. Over and over and over. I retrained and retrained, debriefed, fell back into my old, safe ruts, repented, started over, and trained and trained. Tasks, not time, tasks, not time. Don’t look at the clock, focus on what you need to do first, then on what you need to do next. Don’t look too far ahead on your To-Do list because you don’t know how this first task is going to go. Just do the task and don’t worry about the time.
One of the major ways this played out was that I changed datebooks several times. My first datebook of 2020 was a massive tome of calendars broken down into year, month, week, days, and hours. And I tracked what I did by the hour. Every hour of the day had a list of what was accomplished…so that I could tell myself that I was getting stuff done to try to quiet my anxiety. I spent so much of my time making lists of what I got done and how long it took me.
My second datebook was more of a bullet journal. It was so beautiful, epically expensive, and after the third month, I realized I wasn’t using it to its full potential. It did serve to remove the ‘by hour’ lists. This was the first physical step in my Task, not Time journey. It gave me no place to mark down the hour. But, I was still tracking habits, water intake, weather, goals, and writing obnoxiously long To-Do lists. Basically, I released the hour tracking but replaced it with unrealistic goals. I set massive projects for myself and my day, week, and month. This datebook went in the trash when I realize I was only using one part of it and needed more room for goals I couldn’t accomplish. It’s like I was addicted to anxiety and stress. Relieve it in one area and I will find it in another.
Enter the third datebook, which was a goal management journal that allowed you to plan out a year, a three-month block, and then weekly. Again, it was pretty, but it was so compact I felt claustrophobic. It forced me to face the fact that my pace was much slower than I wanted to admit. Getting lots done wasn’t a possibility and when I tried I only infused my home with frustration and anxiety. It also made me realize that executive, career type goal setting doesn’t necessarily work as well in the home, or not in my home. I love orderliness, organization, office supplies, but sometimes the home needs something a bit more fluid. I learned that from datebook number three.
The fourth and final date book is purely a calendar broken down into months and weeks. I keep a rough plan for each day in the week section and can get a big picture view of the month when I need it for social planning and deadlines. It has no place for hours, no place for tracking habits, and no place for massive goal setting. It is only a calendar. And I feel calm. Step by step, I’ve battled through and against anxiety, sorting out the sin, the health issues, and the mental issues. Each layer peeled back has exposed a deeper addiction to feeling frantic. I was a slave to the clock and told myself more, more, more, you’re never gonna be done, it’s never enough, more!
Task, not Time has been a major win in 2020.
This, these four datebooks, are my slow journey to Task, not Time, realistic To-Dos for a Day, Week, and Month, and realizing my goal planning needed to be adjusted for me as I am and not for some superhuman women I think I need to be. There are still time elements to my days. I have to eat regularly, we have appointments and commitments, and we eat dinner at seven. But, the great work done in my home in 2020 was making time my handmaiden and not my mistress. In general, my days are much calmer and more realistic and that makes our home calmer. I regularly complete my daily To-Dos…by making them only what I can actually get done. A novel concept. A calming concept.
The other big 2020 win that I’ve already alluded to was acknowledging how long projects take. Who knows where I got the false expectation that I could get everything done in hours. It was listening to a podcast, Simply Convivial, which made me realize my expectations were off.
Much the same as moms with littles, or moms homeschooling, or women tending to elderly parents, I can’t often just drop everything for a project. Husbands need love, food has to be managed, the house has to be cleaned, laundry has to be done, and chores have to be completed. It’s not unusual for the things on my To-Do list to not even get started until after lunch. The morning is filled with those daily, basic tasks. Even if I pare down to the most basic of things to focus on a project, I’m only gaining a few hours a day, not an entire day.
Truth helps set realistic expectations.
We all need to realize we’re finite women in different phases of our lives who need to be realistic, not hard on ourselves. Then we can tackle our tasks and projects without being frantic and stressed.
Going into 2021, I know it would be easy for me to overwhelm myself with huge lists of hundreds of things that need doing, but I hope to calmly tackle a doable amount and not make a list that no one could ever accomplish.
Cheers to the New Year! And Cheers to learning to quiet our hearts and minds so we can infuse our homes with calm kindness.
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PS. This was my personal journey towards calm. I know not all our brains work the same. Some of us are list-oriented and plan-oriented and some of us aren’t. Some of us must be time oriented, and some of us must be time and task oriented. I know. I have co-owned my own business. I know what it is to have to be strict about time. Others of us aren’t good at maintaining any sort of schedule, rhythm, or routine in our homes. Your problem isn’t unrealistic goals, your problem is focus. You aren’t a slave to the clock, the clock doesn’t actually exist. And some of you get laser-focused and laser-task oriented and lose all sense of time completely. No matter where you’re at in life, or how your brain processes what needs to be done, we all have a mental fight against fear, anxiety, stress, and worry. Each of us needs to face our mental struggles and go to war against them. For each of these battles, there is a sin element and a physical makeup element. Acknowledge the physical element, but don’t let it be an excuse to be lazy. Root yourself in the rich water of the gospel and then go to work. And get help!
