It was a really good week.
My kids are happy and apparently living their best lives.
Ethan made the varsity volleyball team.
Savannah got admitted to attend BYU in the fall. (Cue the surprised choirs of angels.)
Caleb called me for some coaching about some big decisions in his life. (I love every word in that sentence.)
I got to spend an hour on the phone with Olivia while I shopped at Target and she provided the running commentary and all the jokes. (She is my favorite person to shop with.)
David and I went to dinner on Thursday night and there was belly dancing. (Ooo, la la.)
On Friday, I spent the day with really good friends learning from one of the world’s very best coaches. (Oh, how I love you, Jody Moore.)
I’m telling you, it was a very good week.
Which brings us to this morning.
David hosted a bishop’s youth “morningside” at our house this morning, complete with pancakes, scrambled eggs, piles of thick bacon, and about three gallons of syrup. From my bed, I heard the mixer running early. They ate, they talked, they sang, they prayed, and they left.
When I walked into the kitchen an hour later, all that was left was the aftermath.
Every mixing bowl we owned was piled on the counter, with dried and crusted pancake batter in every one. There were skillets with the smeared, greasy remains of scrambled eggs sitting abandoned on the stove. Orange juice and syrup puddled on the tables and dripped slowly onto one of the chairs. There were griddles smeared with pancake batter, while every spatula we owned and several we don’t, lay lonely, splattered and plastered with batter and eggs and bacon grease. It looked like that scene from Sleeping Beauty before they pull out the wands. Tsp? Tsp? What’s a tsp? Note: it’s funnier when it’s not happening to you.
I walked right back out and lay down on my bed in dismay.
I wrote a letter to my Joy Club friends earlier this week. It read in part:
“When you choose to think about the people in your life with love and compassion, you feel good and you show up differently around them. You show up as your most authentic self when you feel love. When we act from that place of authenticity and love, everything we do creates the kind of results we want in our lives.
“Remember on Sunday night when Sister Nelson said President Nelson is becoming more and more his real self every day? I think that’s because he is full of love and that love is a result of what he thinks about God and what he thinks about us. He is becoming his best self through love.
“The more we choose loving thoughts about the people in our lives, regardless of their behavior or actions, the better we feel. Something I like to remind myself is “love is always an option,” meaning that no matter what the circumstances are or how others might act, I always get to choose how to feel…and as long as I’m choosing, love feels better than anything else.”
And looking around that kitchen this morning, that is when I knew once again that choosing love in theory and choosing love, actually, are two very different things.
And standing there among the paper plates and the cold, stale piles of pancakes, I asked myself softly, “What would love do?”
I told myself I didn’t have to do it. And that if I was going to do it with resentment, then I shouldn’t do it all.
My brain offered me a million reasons why it wasn’t fair. It told me how if I cleaned it up then my husband would be off the hook and he’d think it was just fine to leave pancake apocalypses in my kitchen any time he wanted. It helpfully reminded me of all the dishes I had already done that week without notice or acknowledgment from the people I live with. It noted how my husband has time and effort for everyone else but me. My brain was on a mission to prove me right.
And then I asked myself again, “What would love do?” And I reminded myself that regardless of what choices my darling husband makes, I always get to choose who I want to be in any situation and I asked myself how I really wanted to feel. Resentment, already building and festering, felt terrible. I wanted to feel amazing…and it turns out, I always get to choose.
And so I told my brain to settle down. There is no problem here. There is no hook and there are no patterns of pancake permissiveness being established. That’s just my brain trying to talk me into resentment. As bad as that feels. It’s crazy but my brain only cares about being right. And the poor thing thinks it’s in mortal danger if the love of my life decides to use fourteen bowls (I counted) to make a hundred pancakes for the youth in our ward. It just happens to be wrong about that.
And so this morning I chose love, actually. Which looked like a lot of dish soap and hot water and a huge beach towel littered with drying, dripping dishes.
I’m telling you, it was as good as one of those magic wands.