The last few days have been ROUGH, you guys! I have been all up in my head! Have you had those days too? I had a crazy busy week & weekend getting ready for my first big fall event, which meant EVERYTHING ELSE fell by the wayside. I don’t multitask very well, to be honest. So as I was using my time getting work stuff done, this is what happened to my kitchen:
And the mess wasn’t just limited to the sink area. This is our island:
DAYS AND DAYS of dishes, pots & pans, water bottles, etc. all piled up. Is it ONLY my responsibility to take care of these things in our house? NO! I live with two teenage boys and a husband who are usually perfectly capable of helping out and doing dishes. But events conspired against us: Brian has been having a really tough time still in his recovery from having a tumor removed from his auditory nerve in May. He is tipsy most of the time, and sometimes so badly that he’s fallen down just walking in a straight line through the house. The teens are still working at figuring out the balance of schoolwork & other household responsibilities and just like a lot of us, don’t always choose to use their time well.
In any case, the dishes kept piling up. Now, keeping the kitchen clean may not be your area of weakness at all and you might be thinking, “Why didn’t you just do the dang dishes?!” Believe me, I wish I knew what my problem was in this area. It’s a mental thing, and I know I still need to work on it.
Regardless, I am ashamed to admit that it took me several days to realize how up in my head I was about this and how DEPRESSED it was making me about EVERY AREA OF MY LIFE! What had happened was that a thought that was a lie started playing on repeat in my mind, and I didn’t even notice. I just let it keep playing over, and over, and over, and over. It went like this:
“Seriously?! Look what a freaking failure you are at even something as simple as keeping the kitchen cleaned up and staying on top of the dishes! You can’t POSSIBLY think you’d be successful at 1) running a blog; 2) building a business; 3) helping other moms with ANYTHING; 4) raising your kids to be decent adults?!!”
The thing about this lie, is that it kept growing and growing (like most lies do) in my head until EVERYTHING in my life was sure to end in utter ruin and failure…because I currently suck at keeping my kitchen clean. Have your thoughts ever gotten away from you like that?
When I finally realized what was going on in my mind and wrote it down today, I felt really dumb. I mean, my whole life does not hinge on my ability to clean my kitchen – that’s absurd!! But the thing is that our brains accept as truth the thoughts we allow to hang out there, even if they clearly aren’t when we finally take them out and look at them. Our brains are just wired that way. And then our thoughts lead to emotions. So, we can totally be experiencing emotions that are based on a LIE and not even know it – if we aren’t paying much attention to our thoughts, like I was clearly not.
When I finally did pay attention, realize what thoughts were going on in my head, and wrote it down – I was able to see the lie. Then I was able to see the truth to counteract that lie.
“I have weaknesses and strengths in lots of areas. I can SOAR where I am strong, at the same time that I am working on my weak spots. Plus, I can get help!”
Now, just knowing myself, I know that I am going to have to write this out on a sticky note and put it in my kitchen so that I see this truth often. It’s not a one and done kind of thing for me. I am pretty sure that this particular negative thought process has deep and long-worn grooves in my mind, and I will have to be paying attention to catch the lie and replace it with truth OFTEN. But that’s okay. I have seen this lie for what it is now, and that has given me HOPE.
May it bring you some hope too, friend! You know I’m a bit of a worksheet nerd, right? I made a thought journal worksheet to help me have a place to work on replacing the untrue lies with truth statements. You can grab a copy HERE!
💕 Amy N.
