For as long as I can remember, I wanted a family and, just like my own mom, I wanted to stay home with my kids. Having excelled in both academics and athletics as a student, I felt certain I was going to rock staying at home and that I would give Martha Stewart a run for her money. Homemade Halloween costumes, neatly coifed hair, cake from scratch and a home straight from the pages of the latest Pottery Barn catalog would be the standard.
Fast forward several years (okay, decades) and you will find that the reality of my every day is vastly different from the life I imagined. Laundry piled high, more crumbs on my floor than grains of sand on the beach, and on most days our youngest’s hair is not even combed, much less coifed. I find myself pulling out my “I have 5 kids” card a lot, but truth be told, I’m not rocking my stay-at-home world as well as I thought I would.
In fact, a few weeks ago, I found myself drowning in the chaos otherwise known as my home. Mounds of laundry had quietly morphed into mountains. I was still in my PJ’s well beyond a socially acceptable hour and there wasn’t a clean spoon to be found in the house to eat our gourmet breakfast of cold cereal.
That’s it! The proverbial straw (or spoon) that broke the camel’s back.
I flopped on the couch littered with Littlest Pet Shop creatures and scattered remnants of my failed attempt at extreme couponing. I sat there crying. First, in a “pity me” kind of way, which then quickly turned into an ugly, angry “why me” wail. Was I doomed to live the same exact day, over and over again with no end in sight like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day? Alarm. Breakfast. Pack lunches. Off to school. Dishes. Laundry. Cleaning. Lunch. Drop off. Errands. Pick-up. Homework. More laundry. Soccer practice. Soccer practice. Dinner. More dishes. Bedtime. Repeat. The futility of it all was overwhelming.
I grasped desperately for my Bible and devotional as a drowning woman reaches for a life preserver. I flipped to verses I had before turned to in times of need. Skimmed chapters in my devotional I thought might speak to my anguish. Something? Anything?
There it was.
A verse I had never come across before.
“Who despises the day of small things?” Zechariah 4:10(NIV)
And somewhere,
From the very depths of me,
A weak and defeated and ashamed voice answered,
“I do…”
Maybe not every day, but there are days…too many of them…when I despise the small things that surround me.
And I hated myself for such a thought.
This guilt inducing revelation prompted me to dig further. What did this verse mean? What context was it in? How did it apply to my days? These words were not outright comforting, but they spoke loudly to me in the moment. Further research was required….
