Do What You Must!

I have a mantra that I say to my kids, “do what you Have to do, then do what you Want to do.” While this does not work with every given situation, it does hold true for many areas of our lives. Of course, the best case scenario is when we Want to do what we Have to do, but that doesn’t always happen. The last time I said this to my son I thought to myself, “Do I do this? Am I a good example of this to my children?”

  

My life is made up of a lot of tasks that I don’t really Want to do. I don’t like to clean bathrooms, I don’t like to dust, I like to cook (when I’m alone, not exhausted, have tons of time, and it is fall, so, not often). I don’t particularly enjoy washing dishes, mopping floors, or doing laundry. Vacuuming, on the other hand, can be therapeutic.  I would much rather read, write, walk, run, eat, drink coffee, talk, play a game, or do a myriad of things other than what I have to do each day. But, I must do what I Have to do, before I can do what I Want to do.

  

 When I think about it, there actually isn’t very much in housekeeping that I enjoy doing. But yet, I love being a homemaker.  There are aspects that I find enjoyable: baking a good loaf of bread; having a clean bathroom; clean sheets; clothes nicely folded and ironed; good, homemade food; a clean and cozy room.  What I like is order and the peace that usually comes with it.  Yet in order to have the one, I need to accomplish the other. I have to actually clean the bathroom in order to enjoy a clean bathroom, etc. 

Should I, therefore, go about my day lamenting the monotonous tasks that I need to do or thinking, just get this done and I can move on? Of course, that is a trick question. I don’t have to enjoy something to take pride in it, to work at it Joyfully, to perform the task with love. Too often in this world people Don’t do something because they don’t find it Fun! We are easily bored, and when we are bored, we sometimes give up.  Life isn’t easy and sometimes it is downright hard to do the right thing, but that is what I am trying to teach my children, and myself, do the Right thing, no matter how I Feel about it. We are our choices, not our feelings. So choose to do what is right, and remember, “I can do all things, through Christ who strengthens me.” Even clean the bathrooms, AGAIN.

Life and Work: By Erica and Patrick

    The other day as I was running, I started thinking about life and how, for some—for most in our society—the pursuit of pleasure is extremely important.  So important in fact, that it is seen as being the highest goal of one’s life. Carpe Diem! Seize the Day! But what exactly does this even mean? I thought how, if this was my view, if I were to believe that life, this all too brief life, were all that there is, then that would be extremely depressing. Our lives speed by in the blink of an eye.  One comment that parents hear so very often is, “it goes by so fast.” It does, it all goes by so very fast. Therefore, if this is it, if this is all that there is, then I should be an extremely depressed individual because life is hard. Fortunately, this is not what I believe. 

     This thought—how glad I am that the pursuit of pleasure and my personal happiness is not the most important thing in life—was running my though my head the other night at dinner when I told Patrick that Sebastian had been complaining a bit about doing school. Patrick turned to Sebastian and gave him one of the best little “pep talks” that I have ever heard. I found it to be especially wonderful because it was something that I also needed to hear. (When this conversation took place I had just had several days of feeling extremely unmotivated and tired of doing it all.)  This is the gist of what he said.

      Life is about work, we don’t just get to do whatever we want. We act as if we have some innate right to play and to have fun and to do whatever we want, but that is not life. Life is work. We need to not resent this, but rather take joy and pride in a job well done. We need to strive to do our work to the best of our ability and, through our work, to draw closer to God. We need to sanctify our work and, through it, to become more holy. Our inclination is to resent our work and, oftentimes, to try to find ways out of it. We procrastinate or complete our tasks grudgingly, viewing them as obstacles that are in the way of us getting on with our lives and doing whatever we desire. This is the devil talking as he would like nothing more than for us to focus upon ourselves and our own desires and “me” time. Life is about work, take joy in it, take pride in it, and you will honor God through it.  

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   Work as gift!: work is the normal mode of life for most people in most places, from youth to old age, and it always has been; and this is appropriate. Work is one of the primary means God has given us to use the gifts He has given us and to participators in His divine plan for creation. Even in Paradise, there was work!: “The LORD God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it” (Gen. 2:15). 

    This does not mean that work is the highest mode of life. Leisure, especially worship, the highest form of leisure, most perfectly expresses our ultimate purpose and place in God’s order, but in this life we are granted only small foretastes of this eternal bliss, in which our spirits will rest finally and completely in our Lord.

     The attitude that work is merely imposition, curse, something ultimately to be gotten through (the assignment, the work day, the work week, the semester) to attain the weekend, the next vacation, retirement—this attitude is poisonous to earthly contentment, not only because it is contrary to the spirit of gratitude that should characterize every Christian life, but more basically because it runs counter to the normal mode of human existence.

Much of this attitude is rather implicit and subconscious than it is explicit and actively cultivated. And it seems to me that a normal childhood (even otherwise entirely healthy childhood) as part of a modern first-world family (even a deeply Christian, culturally-traditional family) breeds this sense of life-as-leisure almost unavoidably. Think of the families you know whose children only read good books, who never watch TV, who spend time playing and exploring outdoors, who are required to help around the house, etc., etc. Quite healthy, to be sure, but even so, those children’s lives are still dominated by leisure, by play—a few chores, a few hours of schoolwork, and the remainder of the day free for play. Don’t believe it? Just compare the lives of any child you know with the lives of children in most times and places—even to the lives of my parents, who were raised on farms and from a very young age were actively engaged in the daily rhythms of workaday life. 

     Now surely the freedom our children have now to learn through play, through exploration, is a great gift in many respects. Who of us would wish on our children the necessity of “growing up” before they have had the chance to be children? But I work every day with 18- to 22-year-old children from very sensible, even remarkable, families, children with a deep devotion to our Lord and a basic desire to be and to do good. And these same children are handicapped—just as I was and still am—by having lived the first 18 (and more) years of their lives largely in leisure or at least oriented unrelentingly toward leisure (the end of the school day, the end of the school week, etc.). One might think that six or seven hours spent in school and more spent in extracurricular activities is hardly a life of leisure—and in many respects it is not—but I don’t recall school being particularly challenging (quite the opposite, and boring to boot); and my extracurricular activities were hardly work, though they did require some measure of sacrifice. 

     The end result of all this, which is terribly exacerbated by the typical college experience, even in “good” schools, is young people for whom work is always something to be gotten through or around as quickly and efficiently as possible so that the real business of life—being with friends, “vegging,” partying, sleeping—can be gotten on with and maximized. And it is worth emphasizing that for those persons who have this expectation about life, precisely those who work hardest to maximize their leisure time, for them “leisure” is the least substantial, and is characterized primarily by mere absence of any obligation—we have all felt the call of a television at the end of the day, that powerful attraction to a purely passive “relaxation.” Hence the statistic that the average American watches something like four hours of television a day. Brainless passivity is the highest form of relaxation as it is the furthest from anything requiring work, physical or mental. 

     The inordinate desire for leisure breeds acedia, that deep existential boredom which is also discouragement vis-à-vis the normal patterns and routines of daily life; Aquinas-via-Pieper tells us that acedia, which is not laziness but is closely akin to it, is most fundamentally a sadness in the face of our high calling. He who suffers acedia, true sloth, “would prefer to be less great in order thus to avoid the obligation of greatness” (Faith, Hope, Love, my emphasis).

      Again, this is largely a subconscious orientation or expectation about life, but all the more powerful for that. And it is difficult to see how to combat it, if I am right about what I said above about even the most well-structured childhood in our society. Awareness of the dangers seems to be the first step toward counteracting this powerful psychological force. Secondly, and most importantly, we must demonstrate to our children by our example a healthy gratitude for and joy in work—even a certain ambition, understood as magnanimity, a desire for great things in our normal routines of work—and a concomitant appreciation of authentic leisure.

Self-Control

      I have lately realized that probably 90% of being a good homemaker is self-control.  This is both good news and bad news.  The good news is that self-control is something within my power to change and well, control.  It is my choice how much I exert or lack, but it is something that I handle at all times.  The bad news is that, it is something that I handle at all times. So, if I fail with self-control, there is no one to blame but myself.  I am not saying that there are not external forces or entities that can disrupt one’s day; they are called cranky children, friends that unexpectedly drop by, a million unexpected telephone calls, accidental spills, leaky faucets, broken toilets etc. But if we are honest with ourselves, these sorts of things do not mess up our days All That often. 

     When I think about my days that go really well, they are the ones where I got up before the children, said my prayers, and worked diligently throughout the day.  They are the days where I am kind and patient with the children, I exercise, I don’t eat a bunch of junk food, I don’t waste tons of time on the internet/watching a tv show/reading a book (or whatever). These are the days where I just do what needs to get done, whether or not I really want to.  Every single one of these areas is connected to self-control. We all know how happy we are when we use it, and how miserable we feel when we let it pass us by. 

   I sometimes used to say (usually in connection with food, okay, always in connection with food) that I had no self-control.  One day I realized that that was the dumbest thing that I could say, what, am I two years old? When someone says, “I have no self-control” what they are really saying is, “I have absolutely no desire to even attempt to stop myself from doing what I want to do and therefore I will pretend like I have no self-control.” Of course I will not have any self-control if I make no effort to actually have self-control.  If I would just exert a little willpower than, wah-law!, Self-Control. Is it easy? Of course not! But, it is necessary.

     Self-control is a virtue that we must strive to attain and that we must constantly work on improving. As we improve our self-control, we will improve absolutely every other area of our lives.  Most importantly, self-control is a virtue that I want to teach to my children and in order to really do so, I need to make certain that I lead by example and exert it myself.

“Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.”
― Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

“I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.”
― Robert E. Lee

“I tell you what when I see chocolate chip cookies I can’t just eat one. I’ve got to eat a dozen. I don’t have any self control. Well, come on! You’re just talking yourself right into the pit! You do have self control, and you need to start looking at those cookies and saying, “If I want you I’ll eat you, and if I don’t I won’t!” Come on! Talk to that plateful of food! I am born again and baptized in the Holy Ghost! I have the power of the universe on the inside of me, and if I do not want to eat you I will not eat you! I mean how do you expect to defeat the devil if you can’t even defeat a chocolate chip cookie!?!?”
― Joyce Meyer

“Distinguish between real needs and artificial wants and control the latter.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, To Students

1 Corinthians 10:13

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

2 Timothy 1:7

For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

  

Treat it Like a Job

We say that homemaking is the hardest job that a person will ever do, and this is true.  However, something a friend of mine said to me the other day got me thinking, do I actually treat it like a job?  What I mean by this is, do I always work as hard/put in as much effort, as I would at a “normal” job?  I am not arguing that homemaking is more tiring than any other job I have ever done, or that I put in more hours; what I am questioning is whether or not I am as efficient as I would be if I my work was being critiqued?

   One of the best/worst parts of being a homemaker is that you are your own boss.  This is a good thing in that no one is judging your work or looking over your shoulder.  At the same time, it is bad because no one is judging your work or looking over your shoulder.  In all jobs we always have a “to do” list, tasks that we have to accomplish.  In a “normal” job, there are consequences for not accomplishing tasks, perhaps eventually being fired.  At home, there are times where only we know what the consequences might be.  For example, I need to mop my floor.  I plan on doing this today but I could leave it until tomorrow because it really doesn’t affect anyone.  So, it is entirely up to me how often I mop that floor because really, what harm is there in waiting? But yet, mopping is still a task of my job just like proofreading books, organizing files, or sending out invitations used to be tasks of my old job. My getting the floor mopped is just as important as it used to be for me to keep track of RSVPs to lectures.  The difference is, here no one is watching to make certain I actually do my work.

    Once I started to think about homemaking this way, I began to ask myself some questions.  Do I get up and dressed by a specific time? (I’m always up, but we all know it might take a little bit for us to get ready for the day.) Do I work hard all day? Do I waste a lot of time? Am I efficient in my work, doing the best job that I can, or, on the days where I am in a funk, am I just downright lazy?  Do I use my time wisely?  So I started to address these questions and here are some changes that I made.

·         Each morning, be up and dressed (a little bit of make-up on, hair at least brushed and pulled back—I’m not talking about getting up and fully doing my face and curling my hair like I would if I were headed out for the day—just look nice enough that I wouldn’t care if someone came to the door and saw me like that.) by a specific time—8:00am, and ready for the day.  Up to this time, I can be in my robe, drinking my coffee, saying prayers, reading a book, being with kids, whatever, but at 8:00, my work day begins and I need to be ready for it.  I also found that once I started doing this, it was easier to get going and do what needs to be done.

·         Make breakfast for everyone and sit down as a family to eat it.  This is also a nice opportunity for us to be together as a family before Patrick goes to work.  By about 8:45, we are done with breakfast, the dishes are done, and we are waving goodbye to Patrick as he heads off to work.  

I don’t have my day scheduled after this, but I do have my “to do” list.  In the mornings I do school with Sebastian (this takes about one hour) and I work on tasks around the house. (i.e. laundry, put dinner in the crock-pot—if necessary—dust, vacuum, etc.)   Interestingly enough, as soon as I started doing these things, I found that I had a lot more time to spend with the kids.

      In general, from 8 till 7:30 (when kids are in bed) I try to work hard throughout the day, the same as I would if I were being paid for my time.  I take one hour during naps as my “lunch break” and I relax and get some energy back for the rest of the afternoon.  After kids naps we go outside for a walk or to play, and when we come back I finish/start dinner.  After dinner, I do the dishes while Patrick plays with the kids and gets them ready for bed (we have the deal that he takes care of the kids while I do dishes as it is the only time all day that he gets to spend with them.) and once they are in bed, I relax.  

    I am not saying that to treat this like a job I should work, work, work all of the time.  I just mean that I need to use my time wisely and not waste it.  If I were sitting in my old office, I wouldn’t be checking my email, browsing the internet, or looking at facebook when I should be working. Just because we don’t have a boss watching over us or because we don’t receive a paycheck, doesn’t mean we should give this job less time and attention than we would a job outside of the home.  In fact, we should give it more because this is our own business and our efforts are the ones that determine whether or not it thrives.