Epic Failure

This is the only phrase that comes to mind,  “I am a failure”.

*The house is a constant battle*, *bills need to be paid*, *need to exercise*, *feeding time for kids & animals*, *need to prep. for teaching the kiddos*, *teach the kiddos*, *keeping up with organization & relationships*, *writing*, *unschooling myself*, *walk the danes, aka the beasts*…at all these things, I fail, am failing, have failed… epically.

People have a false sense about me.  They think: I am a  good woman, I am a kind person, I am successful in my endeavors, I am wildly adventurous.  But, as I sit here in bed, 10:30am Sunday morning, with my messy, greasy hair up in a knot, I have around me: a mess of 1/2 done cleaning, a “TO DO” list that reaches infinity with pressing deadlines that are heavy against my shoulders & whispering into my conscience my inadequacies of time management, the fever riddled, fighting kiddos are teaching me that they require a supernatural patience, the fixer-upper home we have lovingly coined the Red Robber groans of how badly it needs fixing upping, The beasts jump with excitement letting me know I am waaay to late for feeding, the plants have tale-tale signs of needing to be transplanted into the unprepared garden, Then, my husband, marks this coming Tuesday on my too full calender as the day I need to yet again face my down my fear by climbing with our friends.

I know the truth.  It is in the darkened corners of my mind, it waits with baited breath for me to speak aloud that I am the epitome of failing epically.  I write the truth freely, but clamp my mouth shut, an old fear of the spoken word encircles my thoughts… the written word can change, but the spoken word can not.

I can not spiral into this plane of sadness & self pity.  I have to accept that failure is not the end, but an opportunity to learn – how not to do it.  I need to understand that nothing will get finished today, but things will get done.

My life as a wife & homeschool mother who writes, will not have nice little boxes to tick off as completed, finished forever; the way it did in school or when I had a career outside of the home.  There is no prize at the finish line because there is no finish line, just like the laundry, it never ends.  If I quit, and walked away, that would be the end of life as I know it; but, I do not want it to end.

Please Stop telling me that it is an elephant and to “eat it, bit by bit”!   I do not want to just get through it.  I want to be ever present.  I think that means accepting the “TO DO” list will not ever be a clean slate.  It will forever be added to as long as the sun rises and sets; there will be work to be done. 

I should take joy in all my failures because as long as I am failing, I am doing.