As I lay in bed this morning, on my back (because it is still most comfortable for me, even in my pregnant state), I reached my hands up to my face (I don’t really know why…I was only barely awake) and when I did, I felt something in my back (neck?) crack. Not like the good, something-was-out-of-place-and-now-it’s-fixed kind of crack, but something that has left me with an incredibly stiff neck and the inability to move it without significant pain.

So, despite the necessity I felt that today needed to be productive, it hasn’t been.  I’m sitting, trying to find little things I can do without moving my back and neck at all, but honestly, it’s not working out so well.  For some reason – and maybe this is true for most people – pain significantly affects my brain functioning.  Writing a meal plan for next week took me somewhere around an hour to accomplish.  Trying to think of a reasonable schedule for these next several weeks of summer was less than successful.

I find, instead, the need for distraction.  I did successfully read a few chapters in Mere Christianity, and I did successfully watch a couple episodes of “Throwdown with Bobby Flay”.  Clearly, my successes for the day aren’t much of accomplishments.  I’ve had to remind myself that it’s okay – that God doesn’t love me more if my floors are vacuumed, and that it doesn’t mean I’m failing if my days don’t look like someone else’s.

Something in me grates against this reasoning, though.  It sounds too much like an excuse for laziness (something I definitely don’t need).  But I am trying to really figure out what God’s expectations of me are, and while I know there is value in hard work, discipline, and biting the bullet to do what needs doing no matter what, I’m finding that I first need to do so with the right heart.  I need to know that God’s grace is available and necessary whether I am weak and inadequate, or on top of everything that needs doing.  I need to know that my efforts can’t and won’t make me “worth” more or less in light of eternity.  I need to acknowledge that there are failings in me that are far more significant, and deserve and require much more attention than my housework motivation issues.  And I need to be able to see that I am fearfully and wonderfully made by the hand of a gracious God, who knew that the withholding of certain gifts and talents from me was just as much for my good as the bestowing of other gifts…and He has a purpose for the person He made me to be.

So, it’s fairly certain that my house won’t be clean at the end of the day, and my odds-and-ends “sitting” tasks may not have a significant dent in them, but I will still be redeemed, and accepted, and chosen, and loved by my Lord.  I need to know that.