“I started writing when I was seven or eight. I was very shy and strange-looking, loved reading above everything else, weighed about forty pounds at the time, and was so tense that I walked around with my shoulders up to my ears, like Richard Nixon.” 

-Ann Lamott, Bird by Bird

If you saw me lately, you might mistake me for Richard Nixon.

Let’s just say I’m feeling overwhelmed. For the last few weeks, when someone has asked me how I’m doing, the only thing I want to say is “busy,” because it’s the only thing I can think about. The days are rushing over me, and I over them, like a slightly crazy, frazzled Richard Nixon in what I think are a pair of very cute pointy toe pumps.

The blood that is running through my veins is jumpy, my neck and shoulders are achy from the strain of hours in front of the keyboard, my jaw is set with the determination of a general about to attack. And my heart is beating too fast.

As long as I am complaining, let me give you the reasons I feel this way. I am a mother with two children. My son is having a hard time right now, and we’re trying to make it through with love and discipline and a crazy new diet to help with his allergies. This requires lots of cooking and large quantities of something called bone broth. I have a job, and I just popped the top off a whole can of worms there. I’m trying to keep up with this blog, the housework, the birthday parties, the bills, the homework. I am writing our Advent by Candlelight program. I’m also supposed to be a wife, and I don’t think I’m doing a very good job with that one. But I’ve let myself off the hook a little, because he’s busy, too, and hasn’t been around much lately. I’m trying to be a good friend and sister and daughter. All I really want to do is jump in the van and take a long drive up the coast to Maine. My daydream fantasies are of me alone in a cabin in the mountains with a wide front porch, a cozy sweater, a mug of coffee, a rocking chair, and absolute quiet for a few days. I fantasize about it.

I am constantly worried that there are not enough hours in the day. When I climb into bed, I have the funny feeling of deja vu, like I just cliimbed into bed ten minutes ago, when really it was 24 hours ago.

On Friday night, I lost it. I was with a friend, discussing something, and all of a sudden, I just fell apart. I had reached my saturation point, and the tears leaked out of me. Big, fat tears and lots and lots of words. It was a little bit horrifying, but she sat with me and said all the right things and cried along with me and we both came out laughing at how life is just plain hard and good, ugly and beautiful. On Saturday, my husband graciously took the kids to a volleyball game, and I spent four hours zoned out in front of a movie in my yoga pants.

I’m a crash-and-burn kind of girl. I can go for miles. “Fine. Fine. Fine!” “Yes. Yes. Yes!” and then suddenly, it’s totally not fine, and I find myself burned up. Fried crispy.

But this latest meltdown got me thinking about what I could change and what needed to stay the same. I will always be a mother. I’m keeping my job and the blog and my husband. I will continue to cook and clean and pay the bills and help at church. Life will continue to be busy.

But I decided that a few things have to change. Instead of always answering, “Busy!” I can say good, because when I stop to think about it, all this busy-ness is the result of so much goodness: my husband, our children, a fulfilling job working for a school I love, finally having some quiet time to write like I’ve always wanted, the use of a strong body to volunteer and do dishes and blow up balloons for a TMNT birthday party. Cowabunga, dude.

I can practice gratitude, just like I said I would this month. I can be thankful, because even though I don’t always think I have enough time, I do have hours. I have 24 hours every single day. These hours, no matter how busy, are a blessing. Every single hour is an opportunity to complain or to be grateful, to take up the calling before me or to begrudge it. And every hour is a chance to exercise my faith, whether that be praying to God for help or praising him for the opportunities in front of me.

Sometimes 24 hours seem like too many, sometimes those 24 hours don’t seem like enough. But 24 hours is what God gives me, one day at a time, as gift of his grace.