"That Ye May Have Hope"... Seeking Balance and Harmony in Times of Overwhelm

Today I feel heavy.

Heavy, as in...just weighed down (long sigh).

I feel a bit overwhelmed with every day sort of things. It's not even BIG LIFE things. It's the day-to-day things. But I find myself in a mindset of self doubt, and just basically feeling like I suck. 😅 But truly? It's just one of those days that I can't help but also feel like I'm falling short. Falling short on EVERYTHING. 😞

I read the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" by John Gray, PhD, over a decade ago. Great book for multiple reasons, and I recommend every adult should read it. As I was feeling a wave of overwhelm this morning, after literally crying as I prayed to God for guidance with my day, this book came to mind. I remember that it talked about emotions and how people process emotions. It talked about how "women are like waves". Often, we will let emotions build and pile up (both good and bad). Things on our minds build and pile up. They just keep climbing higher and higher, and we are able to manage that somehow. We are okay with it all...until we're not. Consider when the peak of the wave forms, and then suddenly things start to fall down and crash. There comes a point when all the little things that we are trying to balance suddenly feels like that GIANT wave. A wave that is at the highest point that it can physically be. And because it can't stay that high up forever, it will eventually need to fall. This is when we experience an emotional crash. We start to doubt ourselves, feel crappy, feel the crash of the emotional wave, and see everything that the wave is made of, toppling down. Overwhelming. But maybe it is the recognition of the crash of that wave that is our coping mechanism. Maybe recognizing the crash allows the overwhelm to dissipate just like the wave dissipates. And then things can start building up again.

So maybe that's what I'm feeling today. The wave crashing.
Maybe I should consider some sources of my overwhelm:

• Dishes (THAT NEVER EVER EVER END). On average I have 2 loads to do per day. It's hard to keep up. If I let them sit for a day, it feels IMPOSSIBLE to catch up.
• Kids' incomplete house jobs (that, when left incomplete, just make our downstairs area feel like a disorganized, cluttered mess impossible to work through). I had a goal to have them accomplish 3 house jobs per day. One upstairs job, one downstairs job, and their bedrooms. I even took time to make a cute little chart with images so there was NO confusion as to what everyone had to do. This list is not unreasonable. It is possible. But the hours pass in the day, and by night time, they've accomplished one, or sometimes two things off of that list. I haven't found a way that I can be a better manager over all the children, and implement an atmosphere of productivity.
• My office collecting clutter
• My bedroom needing attention
• Laundry (oh, the LAUNDRY!) that seems to get tossed all over the floor downstairs as children sift through their drawers, looking for "that one shirt" they want to wear
• Homeschooling year round (or the fact that I WANT to be doing that) when the kids are more interested in digging holes, day dreaming, and slinking away when I ask them to do things
• Trying to maintain a schedule with six little people of six different ages and developmental stages. Right now, I call it a win if we have breakfast [9:00am], lunch [12pm], snack time [3pm] and dinner [6pm] ON TIME. That's it! That doesn't consider house chores, homework, or anything else.
• Making time for relationships with each family member. Trying to find quality time, one-on-one time, where I am helping to grow and nurture each relationship. In my house alone, there's 8 people. 
• Character development with the kids, and having quantifiable proof that I'm teaching my children good values! Some of them have some serious attitude, and I've been preoccupied with what I can implement in our home that will help them identify and develop good behaviors, and have the self-control and motivation to choose to not adopt bad behaviors. 
• Time for God and having a Christ-centered home. We say family prayers at night. We bless our food at every meal. We will talk about gospel principles during the day here and there (especially during teaching moments when an error is made, and we get to learn how to move forward from that error). What we have is a good focus, but not the best. I WANT to have a daily devotional with the kids, I WANT to have a intentional daily lesson or time for scripture study with them. I have NOT found a balance for this, or a way to implement this that works for our family. It makes me feel guilty. I often think of the phrase "HEAVEN, NOT HARVARD". What are the MOST important things in life? Am I helping my children focus on those? I don't know. I don't know how to measure that right now. And because of that, I often feel like I am falling short. Because, from my perspective, I can't see it. I feel like this is my most paramount responsibility as a mother. To me, if I I'm not doing a good job helping them to develop a love for God and a desire to obey His commandments, then I am not being a good mom.
• The fact that I can never finish what I started. I started painting my kitchen cabinets a while ago, with the goal that I would finish them by May. IT IS JUNE! But I feel like my whole house, my whole life is part-way done projects, sitting there, waiting to be finished. It's hard when you DIY, and then things come up and pull your attention away, and then it just never gets finished. I feel like I shouldn't even devote time to finishing my cabinets until I can manage to keep the upstairs clean, or feel like I have a handle on my day. But I RARELY feel like I have a handle on my day. I prayed this morning that Mary Poppins could just show up at our house, snap her fingers and instantly get everything in order, and then leave me with a detailed by feasible personal to-do list so I could feel like I can actual conquer my day rather than barely keep afloat. 
• Making time for myself. I want to blog. I want to journal. I want to preserve family memories with our Youtube videos. I want to have my own quiet time. The only time I ever have to myself is AFTER everyone goes to bed, or BEFORE everyone wakes up. If I take time to just sit down during the day while everyone else is bustling around, I will regret it, because I will find an out of control mess or just things will be in chaos. I don't know what time to myself should look like. And that's a problem.

So there's my list. I'm sure there's more I'm not identifying. Looking at this list, though, I know a lot of it is stress management. A lot of it is my own personal emotional threshold that I need to work on building up. But I'm just really tired of feeling like I have too much going on...and yet from the outside looking in, it probably seems like nothing is going on. I'm not working anymore and am a full-time stay at home mom, the kids are on summer break, we're at home ALL DAY LONG. Why can't I seem to get things done during the day? Why can't I seem to make some headway rather than two steps backwards and two steps forward (essentially staying in the same place)? Why is it so hard for me to feel accomplished? Why is it so daunting to write down a prioritized to-do list every morning, and keep to that this (rather than at the end of the day realize I've accomplished nothing off of that list? Even if the list is like TWO THINGS?!). Ugh.

I feel like I'm falling short as a person. I am not winning at life right now. I'm not able to figure out the proper dynamics of what a daily routine for all the kids or for myself should be. Do I need more self-discipline to follow through with things? Do I need to be stricter with time management? Maybe... But I don't even know where to look. I feel like I'm in a rut, but I can't find the tools to get out.

Maybe I just need to realize that I am human. I am limited, and that's okay. I have a bandwidth, and I need to respect that. I just need to figure out how to use up my bandwidth in a way that will have the greatest possible impact with our household. But ULTIMATELY, I need to find more harmony. I need to find better balance.

In my scripture study this morning, I marked a verse that jumped out at me.

1 Nephi 19:24 
"...hear ye the words of the prophet[s], which were written unto all the house of Israel, and liken them unto yourselves, that ye may have hope..."

I want to shake off the feelings of inadequacy, of overwhelm, of too much to handle, and replace all those heavy feelings with HOPE. And the scriptures suggest that I do that by turning to the words of prophets and learning from their godly wisdom.

Maybe I just need to carve out time for some "personal development" just as professionals are required to attend so many in-service hours of professional development seminars/workshops/activities each year. Maybe it's my time now to study the words of the prophets; take time to connect with God so I can hear his voice better; focus on uplifting and practical materials that will help me better myself. Through this, maybe I can better assess my situation, gain some new insights and skills, and move forward with a firmer understanding and a clearer perspective. Maybe then I will find the harmony in my every day life. In the mean time, my dishes won't do themselves. My children still need guidance and attention. Everything on that to-do list from above is still there. But maybe I just let things go for a bit and only attend to the vital stuff while I work through my own personal development hours. I have HOPE that if I do this, I can come back to the real-life things refreshed and better overall.