What I Did Today

This is how bad it is: Today, I sat.

I didn’t clean. (At least, not until after the sun set.) I didn’t make the beds. (Which is one of the signs of the end of the world as we know it.) I didn’t pick up toys. (Another sign. I’m nothing if not a neat freak.) I didn’t do anything productive.

I just sat.

I sat and tried to breathe. That breathing thing – I hear it’s important. But it’s darn near impossible for me to get a lungful of air these days, between the baby squishing my respiratory cavity and my nose congesting.

I sat and tried to force my heart to beat at a calmer pace. It’s not exactly racing, but it’s speed-walking when I do anything that requires exertion – such as trying to breathe through a congested nose – and I really don’t like it.

I sat and stared out my window at the sun glinting off the snow. I sat and watched my four-year-old son play “guys” with the new kitchen utensils my Mom gave me last night. (The cookie dough scoop was a particular hit.) I sat and thought of all the things I should be doing. Mondays are usually my catch-up day, after all, the day when I get all my housework done so I can have fun the rest of the week.

But today, I just sat and faced reality: I’m not a multi-tasker right now. I’m hardly even an uni-tasker. (Any other Alton Brown fans out there?) I’m just a pitiful little Heffalump (an oxymoron, if there ever was one) who is 34 weeks pregnant and almost 36 years old. I can’t do it all anymore. I can’t even try.

And it bugs me.

I like being productive. When I’m not pregnant, I have a ridiculous amount of energy. (No, you may not ask how much coffee I drink.) I don’t do lazy very well. I’m always moving, fidgeting, planning, organizing, scheming. An empty to-do list makes me nervous.

Yet, here I am. Sitting. Stuck. Still. Too tired to do much of anything.

I’m not happy about it. But I also know God is God in every season of my life. My prayer is that He’ll use the remaining weeks of this pregnancy to teach me how to abide. That my worth is not wrapped up in completed tasks. That very often, I let the urgent and busy things of my life distract me from the important and valuable.

And that today, sitting was the right thing to do -- both for me and for Sparkles. (Have I told you that's what my six-year-old daughter wants to name her baby sister? Sparkles Diamond. "It's beautiful," she sighs, dreamily.)

So how about you? What did you do today?