It is permissible.
Of course, it is.
You can work two very important jobs, you can blog, tweet, manage social media for several organizations until you think in 140 character sound-bites. You can even write book proposals, sign contracts, do it all. You can volunteer at church programs, and sign the tinies up for soccer practice two nights a week, handle drop-offs-and-pick-ups. You can clean your house, make beds every day, and cook three meals a day, and you can try to stay on top of the laundry. You can exhaust yourself on an elliptical training machine while listening to sermons on podcast. You can purchase eco-yarn to make handknit baby sweaters for all the new babies of your friends. You can meet friends and family three nights a week, and attend a home group, too.
You can go go go go go go and you can do do do do do and you can tell yourself things like “Good things come to those who hustle” and you can pride yourself on your work ethic.
You can mutli-task like a mama octopus, and you can rise early after going to bed (too) late. You can pull down deep to your prairie-kid work ethic, top it off with some good old Protestant fear of idle hands, a side of the evangelical hero complex. You can fill your life with “should” and “ought to” and “must” and make colour-coded lists, download a few iPhone apps for productivity. You can put your tinies to bed, saying “no” to their requests for another story, another song, another snuggle, because, darling, can’t you see? Mama has so much work to do.
And then, like most women, you can berate yourself for all the things you want to do and don’t do, all the things you think that Good Christian Women do. You can think about exercise and losing weight, about Bible studies, and helping orphans and widows, about money, about the whole hurting world. You can spend your emotional energy on all the ways you don’t measure up, sure, I’m doing this, but it’s not enough, it’s never enough, I’m never enough. You can look around at other women, other women you admire in real life or online or in bookstores or on TV, and think, well, look at her! I don’t know how she does it! I must work harder, I must do more.
Its permissible. (But it is not beneficial.)
Deep breath now. Exhale. Go on.
If you are waiting for permission, here it is: you are allowed to step off that crazy-making highway.
Read the rest over at SheLoves Magazine.
