This is a really difficult season in my life. I have six kids 8 and younger (exact ages; 8, 6, 5, 3 (times two) and 7 months). That means a large portion of my time just goes toward the daily needs of my children—pouring milk, helping pack lunches, reminding them to pick up their clothes and pick out their next days’ clothes so we’re not late for school tomorrow, fixing meals, keeping the house in order, doing eight loads of laundry every week.
The list goes on and on and on.
So much of my time is spent on home and kids and husband that sometimes I grieve all that time I don’t get to spend writing (even though there’s plenty of it. Really.). I don’t get to live much in my head to work out plots or characterization or the best way to end an essay, because the time I have is writing time.
But something I have to keep reminding myself is that no season lasts forever. It will not always be this crazy, because there will be a day when all the boys will do their homework without a parent standing over them, making sure they focus. There will come a day when they will pack their own lunches without suggestions from their mama and daddy. They will take their own baths and clip their own fingernails and fold and put away their own clothes. They will solve their own problems.
Sometimes I think of that time, and I wish it here faster. Most days, though, I think of that time and I hope it stays far, far away, because there is something so special about my boys being little and knowing that I get to have them for this brief moment in time, this moment when they want to kiss me and hug me and talk to me, and I don’t ever want it to end.
So there is a rejoicing and a grieving that happens with every season’s change. We grieve that time will never turn back and yet we rejoice that time will never turn back.
Recently my 8-year-old decided to start taking showers in the mornings. He used to bathe at night, and I would sit in the bathroom with him and read a story, most recently R.L. Stine’s Goosbumps books. I grieved that I was losing that special time with him, and yet because he now does it all on his own, I have an extra 15 minutes every evening to help my other boys pick out their clothes for the next day and sign all the necessary school papers and ensure that everyone will be ready for school in the morning.
It’s not easy to remember, during the hardest seasons of our lives, that this season will not last forever. There are some seasons that don’t afford us much time for writing, and sometimes they can clamp our hearts and steal our joy, because we’re not able to live a dream in the way we think it should look, and it just feels like it will never end, all the demands and all the responsibilities and all the worry and frustration and work. It feels like that kind of season can last forever, because it’s not a fun place. But it will not last forever. No season ever does.
I got a great picture of this when I broke my foot (I fell down our stairs carrying laundry and broke my foot. It could have been much worse, the way I fell.). Sometimes, when the body is traumatized like that, it goes into a sort of depression. I fell into it hard, thinking that I would never be able to move around like I should be able to, that I would never be able to concentrate on my writing like I needed to because of the pain, that this funk would last forever.
Eight weeks later, I could walk without a foot cast. I could exercise again (with limits). I could sleep (mostly) without pain. And every week after it got better.
This season you’re in will not last forever. It’s important to remember for both the good and the bad seasons. They are seasons, and something different is already on its way.
What can make rough seasons less rough:
1. Focus only on what you can do.
When we start looking around at others’ circumstances and how they have this much time to produce that many words in a week, we are in danger of wondering why we can’t do that, too. We are different people. We have different circumstances. Some of us can produce 30,000 words in a week. Some of us are hard-pressed to crank out 5,000 words in a week. We’re all working, and that’s what matters.
Make your own schedule, for this season right now, and know that it will remain flexible, because tomorrow or next month or next year could be completely different. We must remain flexible as parent writers, always flowing with the seasons.
2. Figure out where you might be able to delegate some tasks.
We’re not made to do everything. That’s not a life in balance. If we are putting too much on our plates, we will never be able to do any of it well. That means that if I don’t have room on my plate to clean my house, I should either delegate it to someone else (a housekeeper) or be okay with letting it slide for a time. If I don’t have time to be a room mom at my kids’ elementary classroom, then I don’t have to volunteer to do it. We have to be willing to give ourselves the freedom to say no to things that may sound good on the surface but are really just crowding our plate more. We must learn the art of saying “no” or “not now.”
In the words of Jen Hatmaker: “We need to quit trying to be awesome and instead be wise.”
3. Take the pressure off this season.
The world can make us feel like we’re not doing enough, ever, but we just need to take that pressure off. Sometimes we can think we need to do just as much today as we might possibly be able to do in five years, when all the kids are in middle school. But the truth is, this time when they’re in elementary school or not in school at all, requires all hands on deck, and that means time is always short, but it doesn’t mean time will always be short forever (unless your kids play every sport imaginable). I have to let go of the pressure to produce in manic volumes that might be more possible when kids are older and I have more time to work.
Oftentimes seasons can come with their own pressure, but if we can take that pressure off, we open ourselves to the freedom of living in that particular season. We open ourselves to the joy of the season, no matter how difficult it may be. We open ourselves to flexibility and hope. We open ourselves to living with no regrets.
