Milking the cow is holy

MOPs sent me this year's theme book about being brave.  It's challenging me to step back and look at how bravely (or not bravely) I choose to live my life.

Today's chapter mentioned a Celtic proverb:  "Milking the cow is holy."  What a beautiful thought.  The small, mundane things I do every day are holy.  Each day I spend with my family matters.  It's so easy to feel like if I'm not doing something extraordinary that it just doesn't matter.  How refreshing to be reminded that each task I do matters.

I've had a busy summer.  Lots of taking kids to different activities and not much rest.  My husband's grandmother passed away suddenly and we were all taken by surprise.  We had VBS right before and even though I love VBS, it takes a lot of energy.  I've learned that after big energy drains I need to take some time to just rest.  Rest wasn't available this time.

Instead of taking the time to journal and rest a bit, I found myself all upset about school starting. I was feeling sad that the time had slipped away.  So what did I do?  I picked up my sons' rooms, purging toys and getting angry that no one was helping me.  When I got to a stopping place, I told my husband I had done the part I don't mind:  compling all the stuff into bins and throwing away the stuff that was broken.  That felt good.  But now, I had to do something with all this stuff.  He didn't volunteer to help with this next step but he listened nicely while I told him my elaborate vision:  sort all the toys and put them in labelled boxes.  Make a check out system so the boys' rooms wouldn't get so out of control as before.  He sweetly agreed that was a nice plan. 

But I didn't want to do all that work.  I had to go to the grocery store and I took along #2.  He's my most organized so I told him about my pick up and check out system.  He told me it sounded like lots of work and we shouldn't do it.  I told him of a friend of ours who uses this system and it works well for them.  He wasn't sold.  He told me we shouldn't do it.  We shopped and returned home where the boxes of various boy toys were on the play room floor where I had left them.

I put away the groceries and went back to my husband to see if he wanted to help sort or organize.  He didn't.

And that's when I had my moment of brilliance:   I didn't have to do it.  Where is the law that says toys have to be organized?  Clearly, this wasn't a good fit for us.  There's no organization police that will be visiting my home checking to see if our toys are organized.

So, I made a new rule:  most of the toys live in the bins in the play room.  Boys can have some in their rooms.  They need to keep their rooms picked up.  The play room needs to stay picked up.  They accepted those terms and went back to what they were doing.  My house looks much better and all is right with the world.