Frustration meets Expectations

I'm frustrated. I am supposed to be thankful. It's November, the week before Thanksgiving, and while everyone else in America is being grateful for...whatever it is you want to be grateful for, I am frustrated. I'm honestly not sure I can do this. By this I mean, be a wife and mom and housekeeper. I can't seem to find a way to manage cleaning, pacifying a baby, cooking lunch/supper, going grocery shopping, doing dishes (they are a whole separate category from cleaning), doing laundry (again, not cleaning, cleaning is mostly vacuuming and toilets around here), working at the church, helping Evan with MBSF...these things keep me busy.  So when, when I ask you, am I supposed to find time to put up curtains! When am I supposed to do all these neat, crafty projects on Pintrest? When am I supposed to  organize my closets or pictures or music or any of the other things around my house that just keep piling up waiting to be organized? When am I supposed to try new recipes and finally make bread (I'm getting really sick of store bought bread)?

Right, now we've moved from anger to crying...I have to get a grip.

I had a resident director tell me one time that frustration is "unmet expectation." I love this definition because it takes frustration out of the "I'm really angry about this and it's all your fault" category and put it back in my control. If I want to stop being frustrated, I need change my expectations.

So what do I expect...perfection. I know it's unrealistic, but that's never stopped me before. I hate not being great at everything. I want people to look at my house and my family and my life and see someone who has it all together.  Well, obviously that's not happening! However, expecting my house to be messy or my life to be in chaos doesn't really set right with me either. I guess I just need to find a balance between being grateful for what I can get done and being realistic about the things I can't get done.

I'm not going to pretend that I can change the way I think forever, thus rendering me this ideal Christian who overcomes insurmountable obstacles to learn an important life lesson (this is real life, not a Karen Kingsbury book), but for the rest of the day at least I need some new expectations.

1. I expect my house to look clean with the light off (even if there is still dust everywhere when you turn the light on).
2. I expect all of the unorganized things to be stacked neatly in an organized fashion (I'll worry about actually sorting them all out another day).
3. I expect my baby to demand attention constantly so when he does sleep for an hour it will be a welcomed reprieve.
4. I expect that we will have frozen taquitos for dinner (and if I mange to actually cook something yummy, I'll be that much more amazing).
5. Finally, I fully expect that today I will choose to do one thing I really want to do instead of something I really need to do (like choosing to blog instead of folding that massive, and I mean massive , pile of clean laundry on the couch).

Sigh. Yeah, I feel much better. :)