the glory of me

I say I have no time, but what I lack is eternity. I do have time, just not enough. What I need is not more minutes, more hours, but more diligence, more wisdom, more grace. I have time, but not for everything: not for homeschooling and cooking and baking and cleaning and socializing and gardening and small group and date nights.

It’s a Friday night, and my husband is gone, and my children are not asleep but at least they’re quiet in their beds. I’ve swept the crumbs off the kitchen floor (but not the corners, and not under the stove, and I have yet to scrape whatever is congealed under the table). I’ve wiped down counters but not the range; I’ve run the dishwasher but put nothing away. 

The night forks in front of me. One direction yanks me down the path of productivity, where maybe the sticky globs do get cleaned up, maybe the pink patches in the shower do get sprayed and scrubbed away, maybe the white toothpaste streaks in the sink do vanish by the end of the night. Maybe I drag out the duster, maybe I run the vacuum over the basement stairs, which are perpetually littered with leaves, twigs, and paper scraps. Maybe I work really hard, for an hour or so, and then I’ll have time to do a long yoga session, which is work in a different way. Maybe then I can read, but nothing relaxing: I need to plow my way through this book on raising boys. 

The other direction promises a much different night: the house stays slightly dirty, but not completely untamed. The laundry tumbles and flops in a hot heap in the dryer. The floor is mostly clean, at least in the places where bare feet would feel grit and grime. And maybe I pour a glass of wine. Maybe I write. Maybe I sit on the deck and listen to the gusts of the wind and throw a glow-in-the-dark ball for Gatsby. Maybe I spend more time praying instead of adding a calendar reminder to pray later. Maybe I watch an episode of Chef’s Table. Maybe I think about my day, this closing day, and not the one to come. 

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

I’ve always thought that whatever I do, it must be for the Lord and not for men, because there is no men in my house. By that I mean, there is no one I would be working for. The laundry, the dishes, the cooking, the cleaning—I do that because it needs to get done. I don’t do it for anyone. Maybe cooking, I guess; it’s the one thing I’d probably do less of if I had no family. I can subsist on a can of salmon and leftover brown rice, but it seems that’s a skill the rest of my household has yet to develop.

And I don’t do these things for my husband, not directly. He has no expectations that I will cook or clean. His charge to me is always to do less, to leave more. I have never felt compelled by him to make a meal, keep his drawers full of clean underwear, or make sure the house is picked up. In fact, I don’t think he even notices when anything gets dirty. He has said, countless times, he’d rather come home to a joyful wife than a clean house.

So I have assumed: the work I do, I do for the Lord. Right?

But I have time, now. Not enough to do everything, not enough to relax and get the sticky spots mopped, but I have time for something. If I choose to drag out the mop and squirt the hardwoods, then that must mean I’m working for the Lord. I’m bringing glory to his name. Living out my housewife calling, willingly, although more frantically than joyfully.

Maybe that’s the wrong kind of work, though.

Maybe it’s harder for me to stop. Maybe it’s harder for me to do the mental work of letting things go. Maybe it’s harder for me to leave something undone; maybe it makes me feel undone, too. 

The day is fading. Our yard is covered in shadow. Soon I will tug on my Blundstones and trek down to the chicken coop. I’ll toss the stale boule and a few roasted bits of broccoli into the run, make sure the girls are tucked away, and shut the gate. Then I’ll hike back up, in for the night, just like the hens. 

And I will stop the work. There will always be more of it. Maybe it feels good to get as much chiseled away as I can; it’s like chiseling away the tension in my own body. The more work I do, the closer to perfection I reach, the more my chest lightens, the deeper I inhale, the slower I exhale. The more work I do, the more glory I scrounge up. But it’s all for me. I’m working for me, aren’t I? It feels like it can’t be true, because I don’t like working. It must be for the Lord, because surely this is what it means to fulfill the calling he’s placed on me?

Maybe the real work he’s given me to do is in my head. Maybe it’s considering what matters, what is really at stake. Maybe the work he’s given me is to see what’s before me and use wisdom to decide what is most important. Is it knocking out laundry? Or is it curling up with a good book, so that when my husband comes home, instead of feeling exhausted and hoping he praises me for everything I did, I’m calm and engaged? Maybe the work the Lord has given me is not the tasks on my to-do list. Maybe he’s given me the work of evaluating the time I have and whether I am spending it well. 

I don’t know that I spent it well today. But tomorrow is the Sabbath. Tomorrow I will wake early, while it is still dark, and drink coffee while I make peanut butter and honey sandwiches. I’ll refill water bottles, stash seaweed snacks in my backpack, sift through the bathroom until I find a bottle of sunblock that isn’t dried out. When the children wake, we’ll eat chocolate oatmeal with fresh strawberries on top, and then we’ll load up in the car and drive two hours to my favorite hiking spot. We’ll spend the day in the sun, kids scrambling over boulders, watching for wild ponies, enjoying the view. We’ll stay until the children droop, and then we’ll head home and once they’re in bed, we’ll order a pizza and watch a romcom and eat a bar of salty dark chocolate. 

And when I am there—when I am hiking, or watching a movie while scarfing down a pizza with my husband, or even when I am up before the rest of the family drinking coffee in silence—it won’t matter that the floors are still sticky, the shower still pink, the bathroom sinks still splotched white. 

I have a good life. I’m still figuring out what the good work in this good life entails. 

But I know it is not always going to be scrubbing toilets on a Friday night.