I could look around my house and feel like I’m failing. There are toys everywhere, the sink is full of dirty dishes, and laundry (both clean and dirty) is piled up. But today I’m choosing to give myself grace. I can’t do it all, and my value has never been in my ability to keep the house under control.

Choosing Grace

I’m choosing to look at the successes I had today. In the time between when I finished work and put the kids to bed, I:

  • Ate dinner with the kids around the table together (it was chicken nuggets, but that’s okay).
  • Washed and put a basket of laundry away.
  • Stopped to listen and engage with my daughter as she told me about preying mantises, woolly mammoths, silliness with her cousin last week, and other things that popped in her head.
  • Stopped to console the middle child when he didn’t get his way on what movie they watched this afternoon.
  • Gave my potty-training 2-year-old plenty of time to go potty instead of trying to rush him through like it was another task.
  • Didn’t worry about getting stuff done, so when my kids came to talk to me I was in a mindset where I could give them my attention.

The night’s not over and I might be able to cross a few more things off my list, but this was a good reminder for me that not all my successes in a day are based on the list of tasks I’m trying to get through.

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