There’s nothing easy about being a stay-at-home mom, especially in the beginning. When I first quit my job and stayed at home with our two little girls, I was swamped with the amount of housework, laundry, dishes and errands that it all required. I couldn’t imagine how people who do have to work, manage it.
The first year we did our best but slowly the freezer meals my gracious family provided us, stopped coming. The extra help with housework didn’t come as often. We were on our own. The burden of having two children along with two hyper-active dogs settled in. My husband was working long hours and then going to school at nights, leaving me alone with the crazy mess of our life.
To add to our difficulties, my husband and I struggled with saying “no” to people. Every Sunday was filled with helping people move, being on duty lists at our church and being given guilt trips if we were unable to help with some event. We felt used up. There was no such thing as sleeping, much less sleeping in. We had not developed any sense of healthy boundaries.
As a mother I was exhausted to the very core of my being. My house was disgusting. The laundry was piled up, the dishes were never ending and the house was a clutter of toys and debris. The table was overflowing with paperwork. The living room floor and couches were covered in dog hair. I’m a neat freak so for me, this felt like a new low.
We had no social life. We never went out much less saw other adults. I never invited people over because of the mess and because I was so tired, I wouldn’t even be able to maintain a conversation. I blamed a lot of the chaos and filthiness on our dogs. I wanted to rehome them because I felt I could no longer take care of them along with my children. I was slipping and then came the day I had enough.
My husband was rummaging through his closet looking for pants to wear to church. He was once again on some church duty that we couldn’t miss. I was angry and frustrated. I threw my messy hair up in a ponytail, pulled on my only clean pair of jeans and quickly dressed the kids. I ran downstairs and threw some meat in my crockpot.
I look around my deteriorating living room. There are toys everywhere, a baby swing that was doubling as storage for stuffed animals, an overflowing diaper genie and a changing table with piles of clothing on it. I can smell the rank dishes in the sink. I see dog food spilled all over the floor where one of my daughters had upturned the dish. I have a headache and my breasts are aching because I need to nurse my youngest.
Then I hear the dogs…I can hear the sound their little paws make when they are running at full speed through the house and chasing each other. My youngest daughter plops herself down on the floor and pulls her shoes off. I have no idea where my oldest is. Absolutely no idea! I close my eyes and feel dizzy. There is no way that this could possibly be my life.
Then I hear my husband snap from somewhere upstairs. “We need to leave in two minutes!”
“Okay, I’m almost ready!” I yell back.
I quickly turn the corner of my kitchen, right as the dogs come barreling towards me. In one awful moment of pure coincidence, we collide into each other. My Red Heeler literally takes my legs right out from under me. I fall forward and my head crashes into the corner of our wall. I roll over, on the filthy, dog-hairy floor and lay there in daze. I really hate my life right now.
I cry out for help and my husband who heard the crash comes running down the stairs. He finds me sprawled out on the floor and gives me this incredulous look. There is a dent in the wall from where my head collided. He helps me up, obviously making sure I’m alright and not suffering a concussion. The dogs start licking my face as he cradles me in his arms and slowly, taking our time, we proceed to leave.
It would serve no purpose to continue on with all of my negative feelings toward that moment of our lives. The healing, my healing, came after my fall. The change in my life, came after that day when I finally started communicating with myself and with others.
I started saying no. No to the negative influences. No to the guilt trips. If people asked why I was too busy, I would tell them the truth. You shouldn’t be asking or assigning tasks to a struggling family with a baby anyway. We had to learn to set healthy boundaries.
I also said no to the voices in my head. When those haunting voices went away, telling me I’m not good enough to parent and that my house is a disgusting mess, I was able to let go.
There was no miracle at hand. I didn’t wake up with a miraculously clean house but I did wake up with a new perspective. Everything was normal and I was going to survive this chaos. I tackled my home when time allowed, starting with one corner and then moving onto the next. I stopped blaming all my problems on the dogs. They’re just dogs. Lovable pets who just want to sit by your feet and know you’re there.
With every passing month as my children grew, there were hurdles to conquer, new stages of adjustment but nothing quite like that day. Slowly, day after day, milestone after milestone, we grew as a family and together our home fell into a little more order. It wasn’t perfect but it was good!
And because my husband and I choose to live life with humor, that dent in our wall remained there for the next three years until we moved. We would point it out and laugh when people came to visit. The day we moved, I walked through our empty house, making sure that we had left nothing behind. I knelt down in our kitchen and ran my hand over that dent with a smile. That day felt like a million years ago. I was amazed at how far we had come and how far we would continue to go.
