A New Measurement

If only you could hear the noises in my house today. There is a child practicing her piano pieces along with a CD, only the piano is tuned a semi-tone off concert pitch because it is so old. What an atrocious sound! Every note is being played properly, but sounds just nasty!

Sometimes my life feels like that. You feel like you are making all the right moves, doing what you know to do, but something just feels off. There is no beautiful music to be heard.

This makes me think of the words in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, "The Love Chapter". It talks of all the things you can accomplish, but without love, you sound like a clanging gong or cymbal!

It is important, as a busy mother and housewife, to measure my productivity not by how many homeschooling assignments we accomplish on a particular morning. Nor should I be counting my worth based on how clean my house is or how nicely my kids' hair is done and whether they are wearing matching socks or not! Sometimes we will eat Kraft dinner for dinner and sometimes I give up and hand out bread and peanut butter and say "Make your own food!"

The temptation is in the measuring stick. I'll admit, often mine is made out of all of the wrong things:

Clean house
Clean, well-dressed kids
Nutritious meals planned and prepared
Stellar homeschooling (where I actually follow and complete the week's schedule)
I'm dressed in "real clothes", have exercised, done my hair and make-up
My early morning starts with devotions and quiet meditation
Oh, and the biggest one... All the laundry is done AND folded AND put away!

So the question to ask myself, is this: Would I really be happy if all these were accomplished? To what end? Would my children and husband feel that I had spent meaningful time with them, loving them? Probably not.

What if we just used love as our daily measuring stick? How then, would we score?

This doesn't mean I throw all the scheduling into the garbage, and stop wiping the high chair tray for the fifteenth time that day, and avoid the laundry baskets for weeks! However, I think what this means for me is paying attention to life and looking for MOMENTS to operate in love. I will look for opportunities to affirm, comfort and exhort. I will hide away for minutes at a time and instead of browsing Facebook, I'll bask in my heavenly Father's love by reading His word or talking to Him.

There will always be dishes.
There will always be runny noses and dirty shirts.
For sure there will always be tangles in my 5 year old's hair (at least for the next 8 years until she discovers boys).

But for now, I'll stop and seek to infuse more love into my life and the lives of those around me.