So for the first time, I’ve chosen a word of the year. I never really gave any credit to the practice before. First off, how could you possibly pick just one word, and second, what would that really matter? But if there is one thing I learned last year it’s the power of personal development. Call it self help or self care, if it makes you feel better. Call it whatever you want, and then do it. Better yourself. Change things up. Chase something that excites you. Try a new skill. Fix a bad habit. Seek inspiration. However you do it, just be doing it. Rest is wonderful and crucial, but we were made for action. We were made to grow and learn. We were made to serve the world around us. Too much rest makes us stagnant. It leads to laziness and procrastination and excuses. It causes us to stop hoping for the future and instead to settle for how things are right now even, and especially, when we are unhappy with just that.
I had more anxiety last year than I have ever felt in my life, and it took me forever to pinpoint the source. (Spoiler alert: it was me…which is why it took so long. More on that in a bit.) See we have chosen a life that leaves us utterly out of control more than most. Foster care is messy and chaotic and beautiful and wonderful and heartbreaking and a thousand other things at various times. But it is almost always at base unpredictable. Our child count is always in flux. We live our life in spurts between court dates, never planning further ahead than the next hearing. Our schedules haven’t been our own in almost five years, with most weeks looking different than the one before, appointments made at a moment’s notice, stranger’s invited in at random, a constant flow of humans we barely know checking in on the most personal parts of our lives. And honestly, almost all of that has been so good for me. Annoying and frustrating at times? For freaking sure, yo. But also it has forced us to live in the now in a kind of awesome way. It has taken this need-a-plan girl and shaken her loose into a woman who can roll with a hell of a lot of punches, who embraces the crazy circus, who loves fully in an instant, who embraces the idea of temporary knowing how impactful it can be on the future.
But at some ill-defined point that chaos bled over into the part of our life that we did have control over: our home, and I didn’t stop it. Worse. I accepted it. In case you’re wondering adding five babies to your house in three and a half years is hectic. And also it’s an avalanche of crap. All the tiny baby things, and then all the slightly bigger toddler things, and then all the clothes that we never give away because there could be another kid here next week that needs them…yea just let that mindset ride on another minute or two and you can imagine how much stuff we accumulated. All. The. Things. Now no one who has known me at any point from birth until now would ever call me tidy. It just wasn’t something that ever mattered to me, and it never really bothered me. But at some point last year, I hit the tipping point. Now not only was it bothering me, it was overwhelming me. My messy house felt like an outer reflection of my inner failings. I mean this is our thing…our home. We are in charge, not the judge, not the social workers, not the lawyers. We are in control of what happens within these walls so why the hell couldn’t I keep it from looking like a war zone? In a lifestyle so full of outside stress, why was I allowing our house to be such an immense added source of stress that it was turning to anxiety? This is supposed to be our safe place, for us, for our kids, for every child who will walk through our door. But if I’m not feeling peace in my own home, how can I expect anyone else to? Instead every time the dishes pile up or the laundry overflows, every time I step on a ten things walking from one room to the next or I can’t find the thing that should so clearly be there, I get irrationally angry with myself and the guilt piles on: the mom guilt, the wife guilt, the woman guilt, just the living, breathing, overwhelmed human guilt.
I knew I didn’t want to spend another year feeling that way. Twenty-nine is just a few weeks away and honestly, I want to go into thirty with my shit together, and I fully realize with my complete lack of organization it’s probably going to take most of the year to get there. I’m good with it. And y’all I will continue to tell you this for the rest of time: when you seek him out, God provides. He has started this year out with so many long sought for answers already, the biggest one being this house. I will straight up tell you I started this post on the first of the year. I was trying to figure out goals, toying with a word to motivate me but really seeking guidance. Now one of my biggest areas of self development I dove into last year was the enneagram. If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend it. As a psychology major, personality types have always piqued my interest, and this one has been my favorite by a landslide. It has helped me understand myself more: how I respond to stress, how I prioritize my wants and needs, how I set goals, just so much. But also it has allowed me to understand those same for others based on their very different personalities, in particular Liam. If you’re already obsessed like me and haven’t figured it out yet from all the freaking feelings, I’m a four. We feel big. We love hard. We are certainly not the most practical, but we’re definitely original, and that individuality is incredibly important to us. But we live in our thoughts a lot. We dream and think about all the possibilities which can lead to a chaotic present. And that is all me.
So in my quest for guidance I scrolled by a few posts from one of my favorite IG accounts, @enneagramandcoffee that were like hitting a brick wall. Her word of the year for fours? STRUCTURE. Her New Years resolution? Create daily structure. It was so stupidly simple, but it was exactly the kind of simple I needed. Both specific and all encompassing. And at the same time as this was blowing my mind, Marie Kondo was blowing up my feed. Like I said, God provides. He gave me the word, the goal, and now he was giving me the plan. And so that is why it’s taken me another 31 days to get back to this: because I stopped writing and just started doing. I knew I’d doom myself from the beginning if I tried to take my all encompassing goal and fix everything. So while daily structure will in fact fix everything, we are going one month at a time. And January was about finding daily structure in the house. I sobbed my way through the first episode, realized I’m so totally not alone in this, and then got to work. And I KonMari’ed the crap out of this place. I am ridiculously proud to tell you that I have kept up with the laundry for two weeks now–yea that’s never happened before. Like in the morning I’m putting away the clothes we all wore the day before, and socks are matching and drawers close completely and all the hampers are empty–WHO EVEN AM I???
Now don’t get me wrong, there is still so much to do. But I truly can’t tell you the burden that has been lifted so far. My anxiety has lowered so much. I feel confident and capable. I feel in control, and that is HUGE. Now I’m not trying to turn this into one of those “if I can do it, anyone can” moments. But I’m like 90% sure I am the slobbiest person you know, and now that adorable woman has seriously made it so I’m finding joy in folding and willingly volunteered to handle Liam’s t-shirt drawer. I am not a unicorn, my friend. You too have the power to remove the added stress and anxiety from your life, whatever it may be. So go find a word, make a goal, start small, and fold in thirds. ;P
