How Do You Find The Time?

I've been taking a mini hiatus from my weekly postings here to throw my efforts into finishing my first novel!!!!!!!! (Queue up the HALLELUJAH CHORUS. This has been a long time coming.)
All that just takes all the mental space I can spare.

But I wanted to write a quick and sloppy note to say:

People ask me all the time how I find the time to write while also running the motherhood ship.
There is often a hint of jealousy there.
Maybe a splash of self-deprecation.
Always a tiny sadness... a loss.

Motherhood costs us a lot of things. One of them can be the opportunity to engage in meaningful work outside of motherhood. Because, really, running the Home Show is beyond a full time job. Beyond.

We've heard it all before: The "I Can Do It All" thing is a lie. It is. But I still struggle to realize it. It's like the photoshopped supermodel. Even if her picture isn't telling me the whole truth, I still see the ideal represented and I want THAT.

So let me tell you the truth about my life... when I have a moment to spare between diapers and dirty sheets, meals and messes and hungry mouths, spills and errands and cooking and booboos... I don't clean up the trails we've left behind. I rush to my notebook and scribble.

And when the nap times come... I don't take my quiet hours to restore order. I read. I scribble.

My. House. Is. Always. A. Mess.

Which bothers me HUGELY because I am actually really OCD somewhere on the inside. But I can't. I just can't. There aren't enough hours to be the perfect housekeeper, the perfect mother, AND the creator that my Creator has made me to be.

In one of my all time favorite books (Where'd You Go Bernadette) the main character (who used to be a McArthur Genius Award Recipient for architecture) has developed an anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, a serious case of the weirdness, and an inability to accomplish anything at all following the loss of a child, the failure of a pivotal project, the birth of a rainbow baby, and the overwhelming sense of needing to be a good mother.

She writes endless letters to her former mentor spilling out loads of her pain and confusion (cloaking it all in goofiness and funny stories)... and her mentor writes her a one line letter in response.

"People like you must create. If you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society."

That's me.

I have to create.
If I don't create, my soul curls in on itself and crumbles like a leaf baked in the sun.

It hurts me to live in a messy house. It irks me that I'm still 20lbs over weight. It plagues me that I don't plan and create lovely dinners of the caliber my mother-in-law raised my dear husband on.

But I have to create.
So I do.

If you ever, for a moment, thought, "Geez, she must be so diligent and energetic. She has something figured out that I don't." just.... laugh. Just laugh at yourself. That's hilarious. I'm the worst and weakest and the most disastrous, I think. But I need to create. God made me this way. So I have to compromise to walk my walk.

That's all.