Do you feel excited?  Anticipatory?  Productive?  I read recently the week before one leaves on vacation one’s productivity boosts tremendously.  One starts making decisions more rapidly, often closing out projects that have been hanging around for awhile.  There are many things that hang on a mother.  Laundry, dishes, dusting, diapers, grocery shopping, balancing the checkbook, character training, the children’s academics, medical bills, the mortgage, credit card debt.  These things can’t be “closed out” in a relatively short time, or ever in cases like laundry or dishes.  I don’t have a desk where things can be cleared off.  I have a bed where I lay awake at night as these tasks and projects and long term goals hang around in my thoughts like boxers sparring in a ring.  Some only land glancing blows, while others give me a rabbit punch, and I dance around trying to block and move…fainting this way and that…just trying to release those ”projects” that hang around in my mind. 

My husband and I are preparing for a week long trip away by ourselves.  The first time in our marriage that we have left the kids for more than an extended weekend.  I have a few emotional moments when I think about being away from my babies that long, but I have many more emotional moments when I contemplate what my mother and sister will need to know while taking care of my babies.  I am trying to be more productive than usual, getting the kids laundry completely finished, creating an accurate phone list of neighbors and friends who will be helpful if something happens (or are good for a play date!), getting things lined up in case something happens to us while we are gone.  Have I started packing yet?  No.  I have taken care of our trip details, but I can’t seem to imagine us for more than a glimpse of white sands, a flight, hoping I am not the only slightly overweight person at the pool.  Know what I mean?  I am so consumed by the fear my parents and sister won’t be able to find something, or don’t know where someone lives, trying to have everything prepared for them before I leave, and having a clean and orderly house.  I think my joy is being stolen by the fear I will be judged a bad mom while I’m taking it easy somewhere far away.  UGH! 

So if you have words of encouragement, a Bible verse to share, or just a “suck it up and getter done!”, let me hear you.  I think knowing I am not alone in this vast space called internet might just make me feel…well, not alone.   Thanks.

mera