Childrens Music

To Be Instead of To Do

By Trish Berg - as seen in her online column Simplifying Motherhood on Christian-Mommies.com

Each day, when I wake up, my brain starts fresh with everything I must get done. My daily to-do list. And that's when the stress kicks in, even before I have supped my morning coffee.

There just never seems to be enough time in every 24 hour period to get everything done on my to-do-list.

To be a parent, is to be the responsible, mature one, right? To get everything done that we need to get done, each and every day of the week. Right?

As moms, we tend to take life way too seriously sometimes. We let our to-do list become so ingrained in our heads that we forget our to-be list in our hearts.

Mommy-to-do-list: Ten loads of laundry (check); scrub that crusted on baking dish from last night's supper (check); vacuum the cracker crumbs from the sweeper (check); make supper (check); clean house (check); pay bills (yikes!); and oh yea, don't forget to shower and get dressed (check and check).

Mommy-to-be-list: Loving (how do I do that?); joyful (even with piles of dirty laundry on every floor of the house?); peaceful (with the kids fighting?); patient (yeah, right!); kind (towards whom? I'm the one with the all the stuff to do!); goodness (); faithful (when am I supposed to squeeze that devotional time in, anyway?); gentle (So I shouldn't yell at the top of my lungs or stomp up the stairs when I get angry?); and full of self-control (Well, I do wear control top underpants, does that count?). (Galatians 5:22-23a)

To-do should become to-be. And as we look at how we should be, we can easily put our to-do-list in perspective. As a mother of four growing children, all of whom have now graduated form the preschool years, let me assure you that these years will go by very quickly. And time lost with your children can never be re-gained.

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