Background: two years ago I was pregnant with Baby #6. I was teaching music classes in my home every week. I was already feeling sick from the pregnancy, then we had six weeks straight of stomach bug tag at home that required lots of clean-up and lots of ME. John got a new job around that time that took him out of the home a lot more than he had been before. I had a baby two weeks before school (and carpooling) started the next fall. I took a semester off of teaching music classes when my baby was born and then went back to them. I started homeschooling. My baby stopped sleeping. Life got crazy and I got...lost. I stopped taking care of myself and gave and gave and gave until I didn't have anything left. And I have been there ever since. Sometimes better, sometimes not, but mostly just surviving.I realized this morning that I have been feeling like my soul is an empty, dry well with a child-size teacup sitting on the dry ground in the bottom of it, holding all that is left of me. There's a little water in the teacup, but not much. And so lately (for a while, actually) I have found myself unable to motivate myself to do more than the absolute minimum, essentially rationing the remaining water in that little teacup, giving out a drop here and a drop there when I absolutely had to, adding a few drops to the cup each day with my scripture study and prayer (just enough to stay alive) but basically just surviving on what little there was and expending as little effort and energy as I could because that cup held all I had to give, and if I used it all up there would be nothing left of me. That's where I have been, and it's not a happy place to be.
I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but I have decided that I have to devote some more time to feeding my own soul so that I will have something in my well to draw from. Temple worship, exercise, date nights, scripture study and prayer, reading good books, maybe writing a bit too--I haven't felt like I could take as much time for these essential things as I would have liked to, but I just have to do it. My hope is that as I take time to feed my own soul, I will find more within my soul to share with my family--more energy to read to and play with my kids and take care of them, more patience, more of all that is good within me. My kids need a healthy, happy mama and I need to be out of survival mode, so I am going to do some necessary maintenance on my soul and see if I can get this well flowing again. I want to be able to pour out love and encouragement and kindness on my husband and my children and my home and my life, and not be constantly rationing because I feel like I'm going to fade away if I give any more than the bare minimum. They deserve better than that and so do I. Anyone else with me?
