in the junk drawer

Yesterday was one of those days that reminded me of our kitchen junk drawer. It was full of a whole bunch of seemingly disconnected and probably really not terribly important stuff that for some reason I think is important enough to throw in the drawer. I know I should be very glad for days I have home from work to do with as I see fit. I realize many women these days don't have large blocks of time to clean, do laundry, put out-of-place things back, think about cooking a good meal if not actually doing so...and I was glad. I hadn't cleaned the bathroom in a couple of weeks except to swish the toilet. Bad, I know. I have such good intentions, and it isn't my massive to-do list that slays the best laid plans. It's the thought that what I'm doing doesn't seem important. Or even the truly good things I might do seem like an interruption, a bore, or something I just really don't want to do at all.

I'm definitely a goal junkie, an "event traffic" kind of person, needing to pin significance on everything I do. When I have a day worthy of a dirty bathrobe and old curlers, it bothers me. When I can't look back on the day and say to myself it was a good one-either alot got done, or something really worth note happened, I tend to throw those in the junk drawer, back to my kitchen catch-all. If I look at it from a simple factual glance, I did do some good things. I spent the morning walking (it was a glorious, warm late October day and I enjoyed it), I went to our little church and picked out a great worship set even though I was totally uninspired. I cleaned the leaves and trash people inevitably toss over our stone wall there. I finally scrubbed floors in the house (another thing I hadn't done in weeks). I visited my mother-in-law in the hospital and didn't get too irritated when my husband kept calling to ask me if I had yet. These are good things. I did my Bible study-later in the day, but I did it. I talked to my sister, wrote some e-mails to friends, copied my son's letters for my sister and sent his address to her yet AGAIN! But that's ok.

I guess I'm too hard on myself. All I could see from the inside was that I ate too much, my attitude was not great, I didn't care to put dinner together for my husband when he walked through the door at 8:30 pm, I watched too much tv and didn't care, didn't care how late my school aged daughter was out Halloweening with friends. Didn't care. I did try to call her, but didn't keep trying. I don't think there's any way to define a day like yesterday. It was my own eclectic and disparate view of living life in two worlds. My flesh just isn't up to the challenge 24/7, and wasn't designed to be. I guess it's normal life in the junk drawer of this world, where we value continual production, high grade action and perfection, and have a low tolerance for plastic cereal box toys and things with no apparent purpose. I have to leave it to God to sort out the worth of what I do. As we say in CR, progress, not perfection...I guess it's some comfort. Lord, I give You my static days and my CrackerJack prize attempts at life.