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On Soup, Vices, Babies, and the End of the Day

I’m sitting eating soup and hearing phantom cries. At least, every time I jump up the baby monitor confirms that the crying is only in my head. 

Today, with the rapt attention of my four-year old, I wrote a to-do list on our large kitchen chalkboard. I’m not certain if that was a good idea as the last to-do—a very large pile of laundry still looms a pants and onesies mountain or a shirts and socks field, pick your favorite metaphor of choice. But whatever your choice, it’s there.  Strewn along my bedroom floor. Waiting. (Yes, the bed would be a better place, but the baby needed nursing.) 

The problem with a to-do list is that my biggest to-do, is to be with my three little ones. And really, that is not even a to-do, that is my life, my calling. The other problem with a to-do list is that tasks sometimes seem to stand in the way of just being, a woman, a mother, striving by the grace of God to grow in virtue, to model said virtue so that the little souls I am given to steward can go and do likewise. It’s a small audience, but to this small audience, I often fall on my face.  

I’m reading a book called Glittering Vices. I’ve found the chapters on envy and vainglory interesting. Mostly, I’ve been relieved, because they aren’t really my vices. I’m genuinely happy when good things happen to my friends. In fact, I love it when good comes to them. And ultimately, I know that my value comes from being God’s creation, and He is not stingy. (Yes, some envy and vainglory rear their heads in moments of my life, but by God’s grace hopefully those someday will all be gone along with those vices that are more habitual in my life.) But while I feel relieved in these chapters, I know that “sloth” is coming and I anticipate there will be a lot of me there. In fact, it is chapter three. And so, I made a to-do list. 

My soup is finished, and only one phantom cry turned out to be real, but then faded as the monitor revealed a sleeping Emmi. 

Here is the thing with a to-do list. I need to do tasks to steward this home I was given, and yet I need to do those tasks with contentment and joy. “Anger” or “Wrath” is also coming in that book—and how easy it is to lose my patience when the diapers are strewn in a diaper mountain across the living room floor. Today, I’ve had multiple surfaces covered in items that did not belong on said surface, and I need to joyfully climb each diaper mountain and cross each laundry valley. 

Sure, sometimes I can laugh like when earlier today my two-year old went slightly catatonic when I removed him from the toilet on which he had been sitting for ten minutes “trying” to go potty. His potty privileges were revoked after he unrolled half a roll of toilet paper. And as I carried him kicking and screaming from the bathroom, I had to smile at the immensity of the situation in Gabriel calculus and the deep emotion involved. Ultimately though, I too probably have deep emotions over similarly important situations, and in those situations I must learn to be like God. 

These to-do’s are mundane, and yet it is in how I do these mundane to-do’s, and when I choose to ignore them, that I, by God’s grace, can someday, and sometimes today, look at my children and say as Paul says to us in the Bible. “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” 

Lord let me follow you in the everyday. 

In the meantime, I must also model what it looks like to grow and fail and then try again. 




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