Un-Doneness

I feel surrounded by un-doneness of life. The incomplete, work-in-progress, I'll get to eventually, un-doneness.

The unwashed dishes.

Pots crusting over and baked on salmon skin to glass baking dishes.

Crumbs that always find the bottom of my feet reminding me that kitchen floor could use a good scrubbing, or at least a sweep.

The unfolded laundry in the laundry room wrinkling up polo shirts that will have to be tossed in the dryer yet again before they are hung in the closet.

Dust and dog hair collecting around the baseboards.

The red juice stain on the carpet.

Not put away movies and open cases left on top of the entertainment center.

The cluttered desk in our bedroom piling high with papers and bills and receipts and drawings that Tommy did that I want to save and have yet to do anything with.

Pictures that need printing out, or scrapbooking or arranged into something cohesive and organized.

Junk drawers full of things that need a different home.

Cluttered utensil drawers with mangled measuring spoons.

Messy dresser drawers with tangled bras.

Barely closing closets of "skinny clothes" and costumes and old toys and memories and hunting gear that needs organizing or purging of all the crap.

The not-so-guest room containing the deconstructed crib, our DVD's and old toys Tommy has outgrown.

A garage of unused baby items and duck decoys and Christmas decorations and old schoolbooks and too many sleeping bags and dog food and paint.

The laundry room begging to be repainted a different shade.

A giant basket of Todd's button-up shirts that need ironing.

The bench on the front porch also waiting for its little face-lift and the 105 degree heat that prevents such a thing, because who can paint anything outside at 105?

A bag of tangled ribbons and bows for presents.

The ring around the toilet in our bathroom.

An unorganized pantry and a spice cabinet of chaos.

The highchair with stuck-on who-knows-what.

My mental to-do list of un-doneness seems to grow every day.

Sometimes I just get so overwhelmed with what isn't done. It's the undone things that whisper to me that I'm a failure - that any other working mom would figure out how to do all of it. And there doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day, and if there are, I want to just relax and unwind. That's what I did last night - put on my pj's and sat in front of the TV and watched necessary adult things like Teen Mom. I purposefully let the dishes and the laundry and everything else sit while I just sat there and decompressed and numbed out to all of the un-doneness around me.

Un-doneness feels like chaos - I hate how it makes me feel internally. Usually after a good self-beating for what a wretched housewife I feel like I am, I sometimes allow myself to see that in the un-doneness of life, is where real life is lived. It's where I've chosen to play instead of clean or organize. Where I've chosen to take a walk and revive my body rather than sort through a closet. And where I've decided to let myself rest than burden myself with chores, that in all honesty, really can wait for another day. The world will not end if I don't load the dishwasher or iron a few shirts.

I guess I just wish I could figure out what the magic key is to having more balance in life. And is there a magic key? Has anyone found it? Is that even the point?

Sometimes, I just feel that everything I put my time and energy into comes out with mediocre results and not as I envision for them too. I half-ass my way through plenty of things and I hate how that makes me feel inside because I desire to do everything with greatness. How my home suffers while I try to work, be involved in ministry, play with my toddler and engage with my husband and so on - just feels like this big fat, glaring reminder that I haven't figured something out yet that I thought I was supposed to have figured out.

No one is harder on me than I am myself. *sigh* Another place where I know I need to extend myself more grace and kindness, and yet I don't most of the time.

I know I'm not the only woman or working mom and wife who has ever felt this way, but I still feel like I'm stuck in trying to figure out how to make things work better than they are. I guess maybe clean baseboards and put away laundry and organized drawers would at least give me the illusion that I've got it all together and figured out.

I'm curious about my need to have it all together and figured out. I wonder where that comes from....

Even this post feels undone. There doesn't feel like some clever or witty or resolved way to end it. And so is the story of undone life around me.