Dirty dishes?

What’s more important, a tidy house or a happy child?

Last night my husband came in from work, went into the kitchen and started banging around at the dirty dishes lying in the kitchen muttering to my daughter, who was also in the kitchen, “I don’t know what your mother does all day”. I was upstairs when this was happening; I heard what he said and was deeply saddened.

What did I do today? Today I left some dishes dirty, the reason for that being that when I got home from work, I went upstairs to take my shoes off and put down my bag. As I sat on my bed doing so both of my beautiful daughters joined me. And there we sat for two hours, they both wanted to talk about the ups and downs of their week at school. They needed my love, my time and my prayers. The needed their mum, the one they can trust to tell anything to, the one that will never judge them and always love them. So we lay on the bed for ages, laughing, crying and celebrating – it was the most wonderful use of two hours of my life.
No the dishes didn’t get done, in fact we then went downstairs made dinner together, ate together and made even more dirty dishes. Then we left the dishes deliberately and went back to my bed to watch TV together – to share more intimate time together.

The dishes can wait, your children can’t and shouldn’t have to. I am sure there are many parents who feel sad that they cannot justify their day at home because there is no visual or physical evidence of what they have done. In fact one lady said to me in the MiniGAP cafe last night that she works part time because she loves the sense of achievement she gets from seeing something finished at work, because she feels she never gets anything finished at home, as she has three children under the age of 7. I can fully appreciate her frustrations, but thinking about it, the feeling I got from leaving something unfinished last night far outweigh those frustrations. When I became a parent, this is what I signed up for, making time to listen to my girls, giving them space to air their joys and frustrations, helping them to gain the tools they need to approach the next part of their life journey – it’s a huge, scary world that we send them out into, even us grown up’s don’t understand it most of the time! I love you intensely my wonderful husband, but I am afraid on this occasion the dishes can wait!

xxxxxx

What did I do this whole day through?

not much that shows, I guess that's true.

Unless you think that what I've done,

might just be important to someone.

Two beautiful girls with gorgeous red hair,

if that is true...then I've done my share x x x x