Priorities: How I Magically Found Time to Clean My Car

 

Busy is the new black.  Have you noticed?  It’s the new cool thing.  Actually maybe it always has been the cool thing and I’m just a little slower catching on.  That’s quite possible.

But somehow it seems like we’ve upped the ante lately or, maybe, become even more accustomed to this brand of crazy. And to a certain extent, that is okay, good even.  There are stages of life that bring on the busy.  Plan a wedding, busy.  Have a new baby, busy.  Have toddlers, busy.  Have several kids in activities, busy.  Have a job and cook and clean and care for a family, busy.  Summer vacation, busy.  The holidays, busy.  Okay, wait, are we seeing a trend here?

Life?  It’s kind of busy.  Sorry to break it to you, friends, but we have stuff to do!

But too often, behind the closed doors of our busy lives there is a tangled mess of over-tired kids, dirty dishes, cranky mamas, a house in disarray, irritated dads and dirty laundry.  Basically, a bunch of annoyed people and dirty stuff.  Sounds like a good time, huh?

So how do we overcome it?  Well, we don’t. Ha!  Mean trick I just played right there.  Guess what friends, there will always be dozens of activities available to our kids and to our families and so we simply have to prioritize what’s important to us and choose to enjoy it.  Can it really be that simple?

I think it can.

 

 

 

This has been a busy week here at my house.  Busy for us means running, as in, on the go.

We homeschool here, so we tend to spend the majority of our time on the home front throughout the school year, which suits me just fine.  But then summer break comes (am I the only mom who laughs at the concept of summer break?  Summer, I get.  Break, not so much.) and we join the fray.

We run the town chasing swim lessons, tumbling classes, and Vacation Bible School.  We pick berries and freeze berries and jam berries and eat berries and cherries and apricots, peaches and pears.  We live in the land of plenty here, friends.

We have buddies over and we swim most days of the week.  We camp and vacation and we try to fit a theme park trip on the calendar.  We attempt to keep the garden from getting completely out of hand and the same goes for the laundry and the house.  Oh summer, you are your own brand of crazy.

All this running has left my car looking like the grandstands in the aftermath of the circus.  Wait, who am I kidding?  My car looks like that most seasons of the year.  Bits and pieces of food and smashed cups litter the ground.  Random articles of clothing, lost shoes, swim floaties, picnic blankets, beach towels, candy wrappers.  Out. of. control.

And so that was my goal for this week.  Nothing too lofty,  just do the running, the normal requirements and clean the car.

Except I was busy.  And when I was home I found other things to do.  And cleaning the car wasn’t happening.

Until one evening I was running my kids and their friends, the neighbor kids, to VBS.  FYI, we live in the country so we use the term neighbor rather loosely.  We’ll run a few miles in any direction and still call you a neighbor.  Anyone catch that? More running.

As I pull into the parking lot with a carful of kids, one of my sweet passengers says she doesn’t feel well.  So I try to mete this out for a minute.  Does your tummy hurt?  Do you miss your mama?  Are you feeling tired?

I ultimately make the call to get the other kids settled in and return my ailing passenger back to her home.

And so we journey back in the direction we came, sans 5 overly excited and amped up kiddos.  Let me tell you, one slightly ailing child in the car feels like a vacation after driving with those other crazies (I can say that, because more than half of them were mine.)  Those VBS volunteers have my sincerest gratitude this week!

Anyhow, we’re about a half mile from my patient’s home when she starts coughing.  You know the cough?  The cough that makes every mama’s stomach halt for a moment.  Wait, is this the cough? The pre-cursor cough?  And before I have time to even throw my car in park, dinner and tears are both now spilling out of my little passenger.

My heart was frantic for this little wailing girl who just wanted her mama and couldn’t believe she had messed her dress.  And the car.  And missed VBS and just wanted to go home!  It was pitiful, friends.

Thank the Lord for the random left over beach towels.  I was able to get my littlest patient cleaned up a bit and home in no time.

And then you know what?  In the busyness of this week, with all the running and tired and “there’s no time to clean my car”, you know what I realized?  There is time to clean my car.  Right that very minute, there was time.  Amazing how a little throw up will do that for you.

 

All along, I had time.  We all have time.  The same amount of time.  We pretend that we don’t.  We convince ourselves that others have more time or somehow that it’s easier for someone else.  But it’s not.  It’s like money, in limited amounts.  We choose how were are going to spend it.

Time never changed so that I could get my car clean, there was never more time.  The only thing that changed were my priorities.  Have a kid get sick in your car and others that need to be picked up in 90 minutes and BOOM! you find time.

But this makes me think of the bigger picture as well – what I really want to spend my time on.  For the most part, I get to choose.  I get to choose internet or kids, iPhone or husband, cleaning or sitting, television or reading.  I get to choose canning it or buying it, playing with my kids or shoeing them away, store bought or homemade.

For me, some of these choices have changed over the years.  They have had to.  Tradeoffs are necessary to survive ages and stages, seasons of life.  And let’s not fool ourselves, friends, whether we admit it or not we are always making tradeoffs.

It’s important to be mindful of our tradeoffs; trading the good, for the better.  And at times this can be counter-intuitive.

Sometimes better looks like arriving a little late if you traded being late for being patient and not getting frustrated with the kid who lost his shoes or the kid who all of a sudden needs to poop the moment you are buckling into the car.  I’m not the only one this happens to, am I?

Lastly, once we realize that we get to choose our priorities, then let’s make our lives, and everyone else’s, a little brighter by choosing to do it with a heart of gratitude and a happy attitude.  Wow, that rhymes and sounds pretty cheesy, but it’s true.

I can be annoyed that a kid just got sick in my car or I can be thankful that all of a sudden I was able to prioritize a clean car (gratitude).  No more random shoes or left over food in this car…at least for this week, maybe. 😉

I can be annoyed that I’m running kids all over tarnation this week to all of these activities that they are absolutely loving and that I signed them up for, or I can chalk it up as one crazy, yet very memorable week of our summer (happy attitude).

There are times in our lives when a tornado hits and life gets turned on its head.  There are times when all we can do is white knuckle it and hope for the best.  But more often than not, we choose our busy.  We sign up for it.  And if we are not able to do it with a good attitude and grateful heart, then we probably need to re-think what we are doing.

Remember your priorities, mamas.  And bravely, carefully, choose your busy.   And choose to go about it, happily!