Business as Usual

Thank you God for this kind of trouble! Please may I have some more?

I’m a terrible housekeeper… there are reasons for this, but suffice it to say that I have no excuses to offer to the critics of my household chaos levels…

How am I exactly supposed to do this?

Child care for the three-year-old
Repairs on twenty urgent needs for the house
Paperwork on ten exchange students
Personal visits on ten exchange students
Organization of all my clerical issues
Deep Bible Study and Theological development
Preaching and teaching
Daily discipline of a community in growth
A church plant
Physical exercise
Music practice
Prayer and meditation to a fitting extent for a man of God
Helping in meal preparation
Romance my wife (who works 40+ hours/week)
Explore writing as an avenue of wealth generation (I’ve been told I’m a good writer)

This is the short list of the things that DAILY cross the plate for me to hit at…

Projects stall
Lawn grows
Kids need training

My attention is divided
The lawn grows…

Just to mow the lawn goes something like this:


1. get out mower
2. check oil
3. check gas
4. you’re out of gas, because monty and Maurice used it all and didn’t replace it like they promised, so get the can into the car
5. go to BP (closest) and buy (highest price) gas
6. return home
7. stop everything and watch Seth because

Stop article: Seth needs care… not just getting plugged into something. He needs to get some fathering and care… but instead, I’m giving him the laptop next ot me to look at Homestar on.. Now I’ll be divided as I finisth writing this…

8. return to article
9. get to mowing anyway, leaving seth playing with his kid pool, only partly supervised…
10. mow for about an hour
11. notice that the mower tranny is slipping
12. make vow to sharpen blade soon
13. repent for lying to self
14. finish mowing.
15. Make vow to build a shed (when rich) to house mower, instead of the tarp…
16. Put mower to the side
17. Get the weedwacker
18. Weedwack for 20 seconds
19. Realize that it has no string in it, since Aaron or someone last used it and didn’t replace the string
20. Realize that there is no way they could have, since the string stuff is buried in that mound that we call the “tool room”

(gotta write about the pets and the flea problem)

21. spend 20 minutes looking for the string
22. string weed wacker
23. weedwack for 40 more minutes
24. be done weedwacking
25. make vow to get weed killer in the cracks
26. make vow to deal with drainage issues

take another half hour to find and supervise Seth…

27.

(I think there are fleas living in my beard!)

27. get out brooms
28. get out rake
29. get out blower
30. clean up mess
31. put away tools
32. get criticized for not looking after Seth
33. get criticized that you don’t do this enough, but it looks good, why can’t it always be done this well?
34. Make vow to rent electric hedge clipper to do hedges, which haven’t been done for over a year…

Now, it’s literally NINE hours later. NINE hours! No kidding. I have done this a number of times, and it’s always the same type of thing… if I don’t need gas, I need string fro the wacker. If not that, then someone needs help with something else…

How often do you think I have a NINE hour slot? How often do I have that?

Okay, so thnk of doing it in little pieces, during the week…
Nice. Maybe in a year, after I’m done dealing with the chaos of the tow moving trucks worth of move-in that remain disorganized…

Oh yeah, and after I get the office organized, again…

Now think about servicing the plumbing
And the hot-water heating
And fixing the electrical stuff
And winterizing
And car maintenance

And earning, on the side, through tutoring, student work (maxed out with about ten), and odd-jobs, enough money to do that stuff…

All the while taking up the slack in parenting our boys, since Judy has a “real job” (don’t get me started about how some church people talk ‘stewardship’ and ‘headship’ and being a ‘bread winner’… )

Hey, you know what? I DON'T WANT IT ANY DIFFERENT! GIMME MORE OF THIS! THIS IS HEALING ME AND RESTORING ME TO A FRESH DAILY KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEACE THAT CHRIST GIVES! LET'S ADD MORE PEOPLE TO IT!