The Pile

Note: I wrote this in January 2011. I even used part of it for a talk I had to give in church a few months later. You never know when your writing can come in handy. :)

On top of it. Organized. Put together. These are phrases that have often been said to me by those who know me best. And I’ve always been proud of it. To be honest, they are traits I have striven to emulate.

Ten months ago (in March of 2010) my husband started a new job, adding a hefty commute onto his already busy schedule. A schedule that included working toward his MBA, working full-time, and serving in a somewhat involved church calling. So far I felt like I had been doing so well with him gone so much. I was managing our home and the kids, and life was good. Then he accepted that job. He started commuting several hours every day. And for some reason that made all the difference. My perfectly balanced scale suddenly tipped.

I remember one night in particular after all this happened. I had gone through the mail, some bills, and miscellaneous other paperwork. I was tired and didn’t feel like organizing it all into our filing cabinet right then, so I placed the pile on my desk, telling myself I would get to it in the morning.

I didn’t get to that pile in the morning. In fact I never got to it. And slowly it grew. A paper added here, a little craft project or receipt put there, until it turned into a huge mess overtaking my side of the desk.

And there it sat for months and months. As I looked at that pile, I hated it. Not just because of what I saw…all the mess, the clutter, the disorganization. But because of what it represented. It meant here I was with only two kids…and I couldn’t keep up, I couldn’t handle it all. I wasn’t on top of it. I wasn’t organized. I was not put together.

I would hesitate to call these last 10 months a trial. Maybe because I have seen so many around me go through things that seem exceedingly more difficult. But I would call it a growing time. A time when I realized sometimes embracing the chaos in life will make be infinitely happier than constantly trying to make order out of it. A time when I’ve realized that these ideals or picture of perfection I had in my head of the kind of wife and mother I should be may not be what I should be striving for after all.

I’m sure you’d like to see me finish this dialogue by saying the pile is all cleaned up now. That it was a cleansing process for me to finally get rid of the clutter. But it’s not. It’s still sitting directly off to my right as I type. Reminding me that I’m not perfect. That there are days I won’t be on top of it, I won’t be organized, I will not be put together. And  that’s exactly the way it should be.

Update: The pile that inspired this piece has since been cleaned up. In fact we even sold the desk it was sitting on. But I still have piles in my home, and I still think that's exactly the way it should be. :)