After a year of marriage, I still find myself adjusting to living life so intimately connected to another human being. It's challenging and I absolutely love it. Part of my adjustment has come in household chores and organizing/managing a home. There are several things I'm still trying to get the hang of...
One of those things is washing our master bedroom linens. I do wash them, my trouble comes in the timing of when I wash them. Take, for example, the day before we left for Michigan for our anniversary. I was doing laundry for the trip and decided our linens needed to be washed. However, by the time the last piece dried and we could start making the bed...it was after 12:30am. And it's not the first time I've done this! Several times when I've washed the bedding we will be up until all hours of the night waiting for the dryer to finish so we can make our bed and collapse in it. We've even napped on the unmade bed while we've waited for the dryer to finish!
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Truthfully, I'm thankful that I make the effort to make our home pleasant and somewhat clean. But I am such a perfectionist that I give myself guilt and grief over such a slight miscalculation. Yes, I should start earlier in the day when I plan on doing this. But I have never intentionally or maliciously sabotaged my husband or myself in doing this so why such grief and guilt? One word: ANTS. Well, technically it's an acronym. It stands for "automatic negative thoughts". When I feel like I've messed up, that little voice in my head starts spouting these ANTS, blowing my mistake up to ginormous proportions...or so I think. A while back, our pastor wrote a letter on this for the church newsletter and how important it is that we squash these ANTS and turn them into ACTS..."automatic Christ-like thoughts". "New thoughts lead to new actions. New actions lead to transformation."
So here's to a new start each day by God's great mercy and faithfulness. Here's to stamping out as many ANTS as I possibly can and turning them to ACTS. And here's to learning to start washing the bed linens earlier in the day! :)
Soli Deo Gloria,
Meghan
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