Time

What does time feel like to you? What is your free time like? How heavy does your plate feel in this season compared to others?

The other day it hit me that this very well may be the busiest season of my entire life, including both my past and future. I know that is a bold statement, but as I thought through what “time” felt like in throughout the stages of life I have already experienced, I think it exposed the truth in my saying that.

As a teenager I got up at 6:30 but was home by 2:30 and was generally busy with homework about 1-2 hours of the day after that. So I had about 6-7 hours daily of free time and of course all weekend free. The weekends always felt short and Mondays cruel and any day we had taken from us for summer break because of a snow day felt like a crime. I remember those teenage angst feelings of feeling bitter with the teacher, though they controlled none of the scheduling, for making us sit in the hot classrooms those last days of June. Summers were 2 ½ months off, 2 weeks over Christmas, and one week for spring break.

As a college student I always slept in until my first class, which I usually elected to be in the late mornings, though an occasional irritating eight or nine o’clocker was all that was available. Those mornings I wore an unbrushed ponytail and my pajamas with flip flops to class and it wasn’t uncommon to fall asleep on my desk. On the weekends I remember frequently sleeping through the lunch hour and being in my unkept state well past 2:00 in the afternoon. On weekends I rarely studied much and they mostly consisted of hikes and road trips to local North Carolina cities with friends or to see family in Charlotte.

As a newly married wife working as an English teacher to adult international students, I would wake around 7am, take the bus into downtown Berkeley, and return home from the school by 3:00. I remember being annoyed that lesson planning wasn’t a paid hour built into our day, so I did minimal preparation at home, trying to keep my work and home life as distinctive as possible. I had the rest of the day, Fridays off, and of course weekends free. The school closed for an entire month at Christmas, as did Jason’s school, so we traveled to both Seattle and Charlotte for long family visits. We usually spent at least one weekend a month out of town at national and state parks, B&B’s, and drives to coastal California towns. Not being from the area and not having hardly any friends, these days were marked by a lot of travel, an immense amount of time with my new husband, and never ending exploring all over California.

With the arrival of preemie twins, a little more than five years into our marriage, came a shared responsibility to wake them every three hours for the first five months of their lives until they were at healthy size of eight pounds. The days and nights were three hour shifts that all blended into one. Even though the girls were on bottles, it was difficult to allow others to help, since Grace had a complicated condition in her larynx called Lorengo Malasya which made her breathing labored and in return perpetuated her aversion to eating. It was all hands on deck for me and Jason. I didn’t cook or clean a lot at this time and my backpacking and traveling days took to the sidelines. Instead of a weekend away to a B&B in our book of great spots, finding a little free time away looked more like a one hour run to Starbucks, rushing back to the breast pump before I got sore. At about eight months to a year we saw the light as Grace’s condition improved, her reflux subsided, they began to sleep through the night and also began to catch up developmentally. I’d say that after they were a year, we were in a good routine, I was sleeping, and although life was busy, I could plan on having a couple of hours in the evenings again during which I could connect with Jason and rest each evening.

Ironically, right as I began to feel this way when the girls were a little more than a year, we got pregnant with Salem. Now that he is here, I can officially say that these feel like the busiest days of our lives. My now toddler aged girls do have a nice sleep pattern, waking 7:30-8:00 and heading to their big girl bed rooms around the same time in the pm. However, they give daddy a run for his money as they usually keep him up and down the stairs until 8:30 and sometimes 9:00 since they are excited to be in the same room. Finally by then Jason is eating dinner and in a down-time daze in the living room. Salem and I now have a generally down pat routine in which he is also in bed by 9:00 or maybe 9:30. The earlier the sun goes down as summer wanes, the easier this routine has been getting, as I get more free time in the evenings. My littlest one like to be awake and needs total darkness to be convinced it’s time to go to bed for the night (or at least a chunk of hours). So my mommy duties end around 9:30 but usually this is when I finish straightening the living room and kitchen. Jason and I have been eating dinner around this time as well, since it’s hiliariously impossible to enjoy a meal with three kiddos. This is our everyday, of course including weekends and even vacation days.

These days of having three small, very dependent children feel by far the most difficult and full that I have ever had. Somewhere in the college and early married years I actually remember having free Saturdays and experiencing anxiety over what I would choose to do that day. Anxiety! It makes me laugh now remembering how I would think back and forth during breakfast over the choice between a hike up Mt Tam overlooking the Pacific or a day at home to read on the back porch and then tackling some scrapbooking. I also remember during my Berkeley days in particular getting home around 3:00 or so and just being so about my free time that I barely was pursuing working out or cooking or cleaning at all, except when I just had to. Saying “I don’t have time for ___” takes on a whole new meaning now as well since many of the things I do now have to either occur simultaneously or else not at all.

Now when Karla comes on Wednesday mornings to give me a break, sometimes I just head upstairs to fold laundry in peace and enjoy a relaxing time to myself right there on the floor. Even doing chores during my “free time” these days feels fun to me. My how contentment is LEARNED. Even the concept of free time feels so different to me. There is a piece of all of us that feels that demands it, that feels we deserve it, that without it we are not the people we would like to be because we need to be rejuvenated. I’m not saying the inside of me doesn’t demand it or feels I deserve it or isn’t better behaved when I get it. But I am learning a new perspective to it. I am seeing that I am not promised free time from God. I am not given a free pass with my character when I don’t get it – I still have to confess those sins and ask for forgiveness.

Paul said that he has learned to be content in every circumstance. I see in the progression over the years of my life that it does take a process of sitting in something to learn a new perspective of it. And also to accept that new contentment. And at first everything in you fights that new acceptance and then when you ease into it, you can’t believe how self centered you used to be with your old eyes. And one day I will maybe read this and laugh at my self centeredness in this season.

Interestingly though I kind of sense a little bit of a peak or a plateau with where we are right now. This season is so incredibly demanding compared to what I see in women’s lives behind me, with maybe one child (or just as many children but ages spread out significantly more) and also with women ahead of me whose children are in school or out of the house. Unless one of my children or my husband comes down with an illness or something extreme to that degree, the time that I am putting into our day for our duties of parenting, house management and marriage seem to be at their max. I do not see more hours in the day I can even choose to give to that unless I stay up all night as well.

I have a friend in a very similar boat and she was sharing with some other women both the joy but also the trial of having such a full plate in this season with three small children. Another women listening said, “Just wait until you have teenagers!” to which my friend politely smiled. If you aren’t infuriated, you don’t also have three kids at home with you everyday. I told my friend I wanted a name and a profile so I could find her and break her legs. Before you decide I need anger management counseling (though I might!), keep in mind that teenagers don’t poop their pants and are gone as much of the day as they are allowed to be. Although they yell, kind of like my two year olds, they don’t stay in the room with you all day hanging on your legs while they do so. Although they too, like two year olds, demand meals and snacks incessantly, if you were to say “tonight you’re making dinner yourself,” they would be able to open a box of cereal, pour milk into it and eat it. I foresee that having teenagers is going to rip our world open one day, but when I’m fifty, with all my kids out the door, and am looking back on each season of my life, I still predict I’m going to think about my days I am living right now and be like, “I actually do not know how I did that!”

I know in the coming seasons of my life as the demands of my time change yet again I will, too, have to change again. In this temporary season it is necessary to set aside some dreams. Because if I am going to fully embrace my greatest dream of being a mom and wife right now, that is necessary, especially when the children are so little. And there will be great reward from that relinquishment. But as they grow and the demands on my time subside a bit, it will be okay for me to pick up some dreams again and to enjoy some relationships and pursuits that just cannot be a priority right now. I think some women get to that point again and make themselves busy with non-priority things and some callings or dreams go by the wayside, not just for this small season but forever. So later I hope as things change again I will be willing to change, willing to embrace whatever dreams God has for me and enjoy life fully as a woman, wife and mom.