"But I don't WANT to do chores!"

So I went to Confession last Saturday. When I tried to prepare for it, this is how it went:

"So, God, what sins have I committed?" Pride. "Hmm. I don't remember committing that one. Let's see, Ken was complaining about me arguing with him again, so I should probably confess that one. What else?" Pride. "Still don't remember doing that one. Oh, that's right, I've been spending too much time on the computer in the mornings, so that I didn't get a bunch of work done." ... few minutes later ... "Ok, anything else God?" Pride.

Eventually I noticed that pride kept coming to mind, even though I couldn't remember doing it. Even though it seemed like the thought was coming from myself, I thought maybe God was telling me something. So when the time came, I confessed that I'd been having a lot of temptations to pride lately and had probably given in to some.

And then the priest started talking about service being sort of an antidote to pride, and suddenly I was swept up in memories of recent moments where I'd chosen not to vacuum because I had something important¹ I wanted to do, like working on Stories; or refused to take the Netflix DVD out to the mailbox because of my Irrefutable Logic explaining why Ken should be the one to do it; or chosen not to work on sorting the kids' clothes because it seemed too much like drudgery and not enough like something interesting. Ok, yep, I see the pride now, God. You want me to humble myself and do all the boring little drudge work that you've set before me. Check.

I wish I was always that cheerful about cooking.

Of course, now I can also see that God has been telling me this for awhile now. Earlier that day I'd been reviewing past messages from God, and thought to myself how all the ones about sacrificing ourselves for others weren't resonating with me. (They sure are resonating now!) A couple confessions ago - back during Lent, I guess - another priest had talked about how, as a housewife, I don't have much of a life outside the home, but I can be like his parents who did "household chores exceptionally well". At the time, my thought was "I do too have a life outside the home" - mostly because of my prayer group, and projects God gives me to do, like Stories and this blog - but that phrase, "household chores exceptionally well" stuck with me. So much so that I started a new note with that title, intending it to be a possible blog post about something God was telling me to do. It's still blank, because other than a brief flurry of trying to vacuum and sweep every day, it never went anywhere, and I started to think that maybe God hadn't been telling me anything, it was just my imagination. Apparently, I was wrong.

So, it's back to the grindstone for me. I'm going to try to go heavy on the organizing end of things this week, but ultimately there's a lot of chores that I need to just be willing to do over and over again for the long haul.

Help me, Holy Spirit, because I'm going to need it. I've got weakness aplenty - laziness and pride in abundance. Only You can get me through this.

^1. Because we all know vacuuming is never important when you have an eight month old who likes to pick things off the floor and put them in her mouth.