I haven’t gotten anything done!

“I haven’t gotten anything done!” – I’ve said these words to myself a lot. And to my husband.

Way back when I had only a toddler and a baby, I would sometimes moan these words to my husband when he came home from work at supper time.

“Did you feed the kids?” he’d ask. “Well…yeah.”

“Did you change their diapers?” “Yes.”

“Did you keep them safe?” “Uh huh.”

“You did a lot!” he’d encourage me.

And he was right. I don’t remember what else I was trying to accomplish on any one of those days, but I had done what was most important – the main thing that God had given me to do.

Fast forward to these days – I have been homeschooling for decades, graduated eight children (two left that I am still home schooling) and I can still fall into the trap of “I haven’t gotten anything done!”

I realized this week, that when I say that, I am saying that I haven’t gotten anything done on my “to do” list – but perhaps I have done the things on God’s “to do” list for me.

Sometimes instead of dong a certain school subject, I have listened to my daughter’s or son’s problems and spoken truth to them. Now that  is important! More important than whatever subject I had scheduled. Whatever book learning I had planned will get done eventually, if it is important.

The other day, circumstances changed and I couldn’t do a certain errand (that I deemed important) but ended up building into my marriage instead. The errand will get done another time.

It’s great to make plans and schedules, but when we don’t do those things because we are doing other, perhaps more important things, we need not feel down and defeated. We could look back and see if perhaps, we just might have been doing those things that were on God’s “to do” list for us for that day.