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I have come to a sad realization recently.
I can’t do it all.
I seriously want to. I want to be able to farm and work full time, keep a tidy house, have people over for dinner parties and sip wine in my fancy clothes and my perfectly styled hair. I want to have the pantry stocked for winter with all the canned goods that we have been blessed with this summer season. I want to have blog posts that are written and ready to go every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I don’t want to write up a blog post for my best brownie recipe and then over cook them and despair and thus leave the blog untouched for yet another week, while I sob and eat too many of said dried out brownies.
But this is a fantasy. Except for the last part about the brownies. Ya that actually happened.
My life, instead, is sad droopy looking hair that just looks too wide for my head. Or working long hours trying desperately to keep afloat after we were short staffed. Leaving the house when the sun is just coming up and getting home when the sun is going down. I am so blessed to have Hubby keep the place afloat at home while I was working 12 hour days. My life is looking at the produce that needs to be canned and weeping when the fruit flies start buzzing around the peaches, knowing that I put it off too late. Or messy floors. I haven’t baked bread for 2 weeks, and don’t get me started on the sadness that is dinner time.
I totally understand the struggle of being a working woman and yet wanting desperately to fulfill the stereotypical wife role. To me the role of wife and homemaker isn’t something to be scoffed at, but instead, embraced, which makes it all the more sad when I have to prioritize my time and cut things out that I would really love to be doing.
So my life now is short hair that I don’t even have to brush in the morning. I cut it all off in my bathroom with a dull pair of scissors. I buy lunch from the deli every day. Thank goodness for laying hens, their egg sales give me lunch money. Healthy? Not really, but easier. And that’s OK. As for canning, what gets done gets done. And that’s OK. In this busy season things have been pushed to the back burner, and I’m learning that that is OK and to give myself grace. This isn’t a race or a competition, this is real life and there are only so many hours in the day.
My days include hand milking the goat, feeding chickens and gathering eggs, working a full time job, tending to the garden, cooking dinner (which has recently been very simple things such as scrambled eggs, spaghetti, or a roast chicken), laundry (why does laundry never end?), and trying to sneak in a bit of cleaning here or there. My coffee supply has taken a serious beating the last few weeks as I gulp cup after cup to keep myself standing upright. To say that I am starting to long for winter is a very sad, but true statement. To be able to spend the afternoon curled up with a blanket beside the wood stove and read a book while sipping a mug of herbal tea sounds so wonderful.
So no, I can’t do it all, but I can give myself grace. Grace to look passed the drippy who-knows-what-that-is stains on the kitchen floor at least until I have had another cup of coffee, and grace to write on the blog when the time comes up. Soon the quiet season will be here, until then there is grace.
And amen.
shared with: Our Simple Homestead Blog Hop, Homemaking Link Up
