When perseverance is not a good thing

It's been almost 4 weeks now since my grand sledding adventure. If things go well, I should be half way through my convalescence. In the past two weeks, I have made a strange discovery. How many times when I have been healthy have I been significantly less than excited about doing household chores? How often would I have loved to pawn them off on someone else? However, it is another story entirely not to be ABLE to do some household chores or to have to stop in the middle of them because of a painful back. It is starting to drive me crazy sometimes. Yesterday the kitchen garbage was overflowing and I couldn't take it out. A few days ago the dirty bathroom got to me so much that I actually cleaned the worst of it. This is when I discovered that perseverance is not a good thing. I think I am still paying for overdoing it. I won't even go into the vacuuming issue. With three relatively young children, I'm sure everyone can imagine how quickly our floor gets messy, especially under the table. Maybe some of you are like me in that you are not exactly obsessed with a clean house, but sometimes things just get to a point where you can't take it anymore. You know those days when you just HAVE to vacuum? Imagine not being able to do it. In some ways not being able to vacuum is a break, but having to live with the mess is not. My dear Schatzi is wonderful and is really doing the best he can, but obviously he cannot vacuum if he is not here. Between work, church, grocery shopping and child responsibilities, there are only so many hours in the day. It drives him crazy too.....but sometimes my normal standard of housekeeping (and I do use that term loosely) drives him crazy.

I guess God is trying to teach me patience. When I see things that I can't do that need to be done or that I have to ask someone else to do for me, that is just the opposite of my normal way of doing things. I don't like to ask for help. I want to do it myself (just like a two year old, I suppose :) ). Maybe God is also teaching me to ask for help before I reach the point of having a "nervous breakdown." This is also a fault of mine - not asking for help until I've made myself and everyone around me miserable.

So, I hope I will remember when I am "healed"(and maybe this will give encouragement to those of you who don't have fractured backs or other progress-impeding injuries) what a blessing it is to be able to vacuum what needs vacuuming, clean what needs cleaning, pick up what needs picking up, take out what needs taking out, carry what needs carrying etc. etc.

In the meantime, I'm spending lots of time on Facebook and watching "The Lone Ranger".........and realizing that I need to take it easy more often or I will pay for it later.