The sands of time, or something like that

There's a bucket of sand, and the grains represent the ticking of time. Each of us has the same amount of sand in our day, you know the 24 hours we call a day (and night if you want to be technical).  And of course, some of us have more 24 hours than others and none of us knows exactly how many that is.  But we each get to choose what we do with the 24 hours we are given.  Well, that's not exactly true, there are some circumstances that dictate what you can do, more so what we can't do.  You know, like if you are incarcerated or laid up in the hospital, that kind of thing.  But we do get to choose our attitude about our circumstances.  For the purpose of this rambling I'm talking about someone like me, a fifty-something, stay-at-home-(still)-mom with kind of average circumstances. Alright, really for the purposes of this rambling we're just gonna say it's my experience, okay? And you know the story of the professor who uses a far of sand, rocks, pebbles and water to fill up a jar, right?

I married my high school sweetheart in the summer between his freshman and sophomore year in college.  We had our first child about 17 months later, and after graduation he received a commission as an officer in the United States Army.  We moved away from the only home I had ever known and started on an adventure.  I don't know where it came from, because my mom doesn't have an ounce of this in her, but I became a volunteer.  I volunteered for coffees, luncheons, support group teams, organizing big events like the battalion Halloween Carnival (twice).  We had more babies and moved - a lot.  Everywhere we landed there were new and fun opportunities to volunteer.  If I saw a need for some sort of support group and there wasn't one, I started one.  I started a homeschool support group, a chapter of Military Council of Catholic Women, I organized a seder meal for our base... You get the picture.  When we moved to Illinois, the gal who was in charge of the local homeschool support group had determined to step down even if no one else stepped up.  I didn't want that to happen so even though I was pretty much new to the area and to homeschooling I jumped in - head first.  I was one of the high school youth ministry leaders at our base church and the list goes on.

I have always been pretty good at organizing stuff.  I love to organize, plan, host and run events.  I should say I used to love doing all that.  I didn't realize until it was almost too late that I had allowed my passion for doing these things to interfere with my responsibilities to my family.  I claimed I was doing all of it for them, but all they really wanted was more of me - more of my time, more of my attention.  They deserved more of me.  And so I stepped back from it all in one fell swoop.  I had started to back off slowly, first one thing and then another but in the end I had to just walk away and I left some pretty important people in a lurch.  I knew they would eventually pull it together and move forward.  I'm not that important, although I wanted in some ways to believe I was.  My sense of validation and worth during those years came only from my accomplishments in the area of volunteer work.  I didn't believe I was a good wife or mother, and I was not a college graduate so I felt "less than".  

A lot of things happened that year, more than just my stepping away from volunteer work.  That's a story for another time. There is a strange thing that I noticed though.  The time that I thought I would reclaim by not spending it on all that planning and hosting never really materialized.  In fact, it feels as though the less I have to do, the more I have to do.  I actually did a 180 turn from where I was, and now I volunteer for zero.  I mean zero.  The hole I thought I created just filled up with more sand.

Sometimes I feel really guilty about that, like when the church that I have come to love so much needs volunteers for all different types of ministries.  My heart really is for other women.  We have been blessed with five kids, most of whom are grown now, and three grandchildren (and counting!). You'd think I would have a heart for working with kids, but I confess I do not.  I love, love, love my own kids and enjoy spending time with them and serving them, but I just can't get my head wrapped around working with other groups of kids.  I am working on letting go of the guilt and realizing that I can't do it all.  I wasn't created or called to do it all.  I think God plants desires in our hearts that lead us to our purpose, if we are open to listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit.  That doesn't happen by accident.

So these days it seems that I continue on a journey of narrowing my activities to the purpose of the season I'm living.  That makes my daily routine look a whole lot different than it used to.  At the end of some days I wonder how on earth I ever kept up with the pace I did for so long.


Seems like maybe the sands of time just shifted :-)