Anyone who knows me well, knows I'm a neat freak. My car, not so much. But my home, oh yes!! I remember cleaning my first apartment on Friday nights instead of going out to clubs with my friends. Even getting out of the hospital after almost dying from pneumonia, I was Windexing water spots on mirrors! A slight obsession, or OCD? Maybe a bit of both!
I was the mom who didn't let her kids get dirty either! Well, that is until I had my last child. We would laugh and call him Pigpen (from Peanuts) because there was always a cloud of dirt around him. My efforts to keep him clean, and my home clean, were completely failing!
So what did I do? I got angry! I would work so hard that as soon as he, or anyone else made a mess in MY Nest, I freaked on them! Not something I'm proud of.
As my health continued to decline, I knew I was supposed to slow down, take breaks, and enjoy life a bit more. I even told myself I was, but truth is, I wasn't!
What was it going to take? Only God knew!
Without going into great detail of the big "revelation," I will say that it took a painful lesson to realize that my kids will not always be here. Well, duh! But when our kids are young, a mom can tend to think we have all the time in the world with them, we don't! In what seems like a blink of an eye, they are grown, moving out, and making a life for themselves!
I will have the rest of my life to have a neat Nest when they are gone and it's just Daddy Bird and me! Right now is the time to cherish every moment I have left with them, because now I realize it's so short.
Does that mean I have a Mess in "The Nest?" Well occasionally I may, but for the most part, I'm still OCD about my home. However, my perspective as a mother, and my heart have completely changed, for the better!
