Nesting

I feel like I'm expecting a baby, and, with four babies already, I should know. I've spent the last few days cleaning and purging and organizing, and I have miles to go. Ideas for super-organization, goals for cleaning, dreams of toys making it back to their bins as if by magic...I know I'm going to crash. And I'm terrified of that.

All of this is because school starts for the kids in two-and-a-half weeks, and for me a week later. It seems as if everything needs to be perfect when school starts so that the days will fly by in a smoothly-running rush. No bumps, no messes, no emergency pizzas or Zaxby's chicken dinners. In other words, I am developing a really bad case of perfectionism.

This is certainly not what I was expecting as I get ready to go back to school. I know that I usually get the blues in August, when freedom comes to an end, but this is different. It has an edge to it, and I'm feeling a little like I'm on a precipice...one false move and BAM!! Into the great beyond, with no hope of pulling things back together.

Well, I guess I just need to talk myself down from this ledge. I'm trying so, so hard to remember to take each day as it comes, that school is only eight hours a week plus studying. I pray that God can help me remember this, to relax into it and enjoy this journey He's set before me. I also know in my head, but not yet my heart, that I can't get obsessed with my own journey. I need to be as much a part of my family as ever. I can't disengage, because it's not the time for that. So I need God's grace to cover me as I take the next step!

You know, in that picture up there, I really don't look that miserable. It was pretty fun, actually. Maybe leaning into the anxiety is exactly the thing I'm supposed to do. Thanks be to God!