Less "Doing" More "Being"

“You’re crazy!” 

I heard this a few times last week...from my mother, a handful of friends, and my husband. It’s not that I was intentionally looking for ways to overbook myself, everything just happened to fall in the same week. Yes, I had a baby seven weeks ago and decided to host a dinner and two big parties three nights in a row. Those things always look good on the calendar when you’re planning them because they all fell on different days. What can I say, I function well when I have lots of things to juggle. I didn’t take into account the emotional exhaustion or the fact that party prep is really only plausible in the evening hours after 7pm when my toddler is asleep in bed. So a crazy weekend it was! There wasn’t a lot of sleep but there was a lot of laughter, time with great friends, and joyful celebration. 

I rest well tonight having done it all and of course now thinking...that wasn’t so bad...

But why do I do this to myself? Why do I run around trying to fit in all things and leave little time to breathe? That can’t be a healthy way to live. If we didn’t throw our annual Christmas party people would understand...for heaven’s sake we just had a baby! But I often battle my own personal expectations to pull things off regardless of circumstance. It’s almost like it is a challenge I create for myself to overcome since I know subconsciously I will never back down from the challenge.

I was explaining to a friend why I enjoy hosting. It brings me great pleasure to bring people together and facilitate a place of openness and community. Between my last trimester of pregnancy and the following weeks after giving birth I felt I had fallen off the map. I thrive on relationships and socialization, something I had been missing for several weeks. Not to mention feeling like I had lost control over my body and my schedule, I needed to grasp control and feel accomplished in something. Therefore I put my energy in to hosting and flurried around for four days cooking, cleaning, and entertaining with great joy (and dragging my poor husband along for the ride). 

As I look back over the last few days I am so glad it all happened and wouldn’t have changed a thing. That being said, moving forward I recognize that I need to slow down and let go of the internal pressure to “do it all”. In this next year I am going to work on less “doing” and more “being”, in an effort to intentionally engage with others. I will most definitely be hosting things, as this brings me great joy, but no more stacking things so close that it limits my ability to look forward to and enjoy each event without thinking about what is coming next.

Can you relate?  

Journey with me, pray with me, and feel free to comment.

@nfpteaching #strivinginmotherhood nfpteaching.com