The other day I posted a picture on Facebook of Abraham laying on the floor of  a Michael’s craft store reading a book he found on the shelf. It was a very innocent gesture. Just a cute picture.

But, oh, the controversy it caused.

First, it started with a few comments about how well-behaved my son must be. Then, how crafty I must be if I’m spending time at a Michael’s. Then I started getting personal messages asking what I was crafting and how I was crafting and how I got Abe to behave. It snowballed. Folks went all over the place with assumptions about this picture.

How many times have you looked at a picture or status on Facebook, compared your own life to it, and then automatically assumed that your life is worse/harder/more exhausting than the person who originally posted? Maybe you don’t even do it consciously. You just suddenly feel badly, or kind of sad, and immediately begin working on your life as a whole because it’s obviously irreparably broken. You don’t connect it with the possibility that the person just posted the BEST moment of their week. You just want to move to Patagonia and start a new life.

Well, let me clear that picture up right now. Abraham finally settled in that place where he would read that book shortly after he pulled ALL the books off of the shelves and refused to help me replace them by screaming. Ordinarily I would frown upon my child wallowing on the floor of a store reading a book he was bending and tearing that I had no intention of buying, but he was quiet and not moving and I was able to shop for a few moments before he began screaming again. And what was I shopping for? Fake plants. Because I kill real plants on contact. We have ONE house plant that I haven’t killed, and I really have no idea how it’s still alive because I’ve never watered it. I was not crafting. I do not look at a tongue depressor and see a rose bud. No. I kill house plants. Oh, and shortly before we left, Abe pulled an entire lot of wire bicycle wine racks off a shelf. It was very loud. Or, as Abe announced, “Beeeeery wowd.” Thankfully, nothing broke, and we quickly exited the store.

So look at this picture as you will, but this was a brief moment of peace and beauty in the middle of very human day that included meltdowns, broken toys, and poopy blowouts. The next time you look at a picture/status on Facebook that makes you feel bad, even if just for a SECOND, retell the story of that picture in the worst possible way. Because that’s more likely the story behind it anyway.

With several clients headed into town and then on in to my upstairs guest room, I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief upon realizing they would arrive the day the cleaning woman comes to my house. Bullet dodged.

Eww. I hate admitting that I hire a woman to clean my house. It makes me feel snooty, ungrateful, and like people think I’m spoiled. Of course, I’m incredibly grateful to this woman who comes into my home and cleans it from top to bottom. I thank her profusely every time she is here and I make sure she is comfortable and knows she can eat/use anything she wants. But I still feel like I should be doing more to prove it’s ok that I pay for this service.

The day she’s due at my house, I got up and made sure things were picked up and surfaces were cleared off so she could get in there and work her magic. I opened the front door and left a happy little stickie inviting her in when she arrived. All I had to do was get Abe to school, work, come home, and the house would be clean and I could cook dinner for our guests.

Cue the cleaning woman texting me to tell me she is sick and can’t make it.

Did you hear me? The cleaning lady is sick. She can’t clean today.

Complete panic over how much cleaning there is to do because I didn’t do any of it during the week because we hire a CLEANING LADY. Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean an entire house in one day? I clean my house regularly in small bits and pieces, never all at once. It took for-ever to dust, wipe, disinfect, scrub, sweep, and mop our modest little home and I was exhausted by the time I was finished. NOW how snotty do I sound?

I decided it just had to be done. I was going to figure out how to do it all. I proceeded to clean while checking my work emails in between each task and taking conference calls while mopping for the next 6 hours. By the time I was done, I sat back and looked to see  faucets that twinkled in the sunlight, countertops clear of debris and clutter, floors minus scuff marks, windows without nose prints. And you know what I felt?
Grateful.
I am so unbelievably grateful that I get to work, my child goes to school and he still spends days with me, and that if the cleaning woman cancels I am in a position where, for one day at least, I can do it all.
I am also incredibly grateful that this woman comes to my home and cleans it with as much care as I do. She doesn’t make me feel badly or guilty. In fact, she is grateful for the work.

I think what I’m trying to say is that when I misplace the notion that I’m incredibly lucky, the cleaning lady gets sick and reminds me just how lucky I am. Sweet little reminders come from the strangest places.

I ruined my manicure, but that’s ok.

So today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It is a holiday for my business but Abe had school. What does this equal?
(Cue the angels)
AN ENTIRE DAY TO MYSELF!!!!

Of course, I began making lists of things that I should accomplish with this day several weeks ago. Painting, crafting, organizing, cleaning, re-organizing…the list of possibilities was seemingly endless. Oh happy, happy, joy, joy. A PRODUCTIVE HOME DAY!

You can see where this is going, right? I woke up this morning, took Abe to school, and the only other thing I wanted to do was lie in bed and read. Maybe watch Oprah reruns. Maybe drink tea. MAYBE.

And so you know what I did? I fought all of my urges to catch up on the million blogs I keep meaning to read and the katrillion posts on Pinterest I know would interest me (hey, I just figured out why they call it that). I resisted the urge to call people I need to catch up with and weed through emails. I even fought the urge to do the laundry. I came home, got in bed, and stayed there. And it was glorious.

Painfully glorious.

You see, the guilt crept in all day. It woke me from a dead sleep on a number of occasions, no joke. My to-do list snickered and my laundry baskets cough and choked as if my last pair of clean sweat pants might throw them into full-on hysterical vomiting. The weeds outside my window reached up and smirked at me. “It’s cool. We’ll just take over the back yard.” The floors gurgled up with muck and grime, and sandy ash floated around coating all the surfaces. The ceiling fan whirred around above me, daring me to turn it off so I could see the puffy patches of dust clinging to the paddles in all their glory (speaking of glory, they were actually singing, “Glory, glory, hallelujah” in little chipmunk voices). And the worst of all? The dishes in the sink clinked together on occasion to softly remind me that fly-attracting breakfast food was facing a slow and painful death in the kitchen sink.

But, ladies and gents, I fought it. I fought the guilt and insisted on remaining guilt-free. And when I could lie in bed no more, I took a walk. A walk to no where. There was no agenda for this walk, not even a Pandora station I planned out prior to leaving. I didn’t even wear good socks. I just threw shoes on and walked. And by the time I got home, I was so refreshed, so focused, so calm that I decided I didn’t even mind doing the dishes or crossing a few things off my list in the hours before Abe came home from school. I leisurely did a little cleaning, a little organizing, a little to-do list writing. No stress. No panic. No T-2 hours until the world explodes and then I’ll NEVER get this stuck-on food off the stove. And even in this very moment, without wine or gluten-y foods, I am at peace and content.

And then I read this MLK quote:

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. 

The lesson today? If you seek peace, seek it in the things you do today, not as the goal you must reach by the end of the day. Find peace in the simplest of tasks and in the most challenging. You don’t need an entire day off to do it (although, I’ll admit, it helps). Breathe deeply and feel the peace in a hug, watching your children play, or even cleaning a dish. Peace is everywhere.

So are legos. And they hurt like a mother when you step on one in your bare feet. It’s okay when that doesn’t bring you peace. Just find it somewhere else.