Reassurance

Last week in Relief Society we talked about charity, and one sister brought up the need to have charity for ourselves, as well as for others.

This is a real need, and I think one thing that makes it harder is that we will often have so many good intentions that end up being more than we can manage. We want good things, but we are not doing them, or not as many as need to be done, or not as many as we think we should be able to do.

The comfort I can give here is that although we do not have infinite time, and that is frustrating, the time we have can be enough.

That has been especially noticeable for me in two ways lately.

One has been that my scripture study is often interrupted. It's a thing we are supposed to do, I have seen the benefits, but I get needed a lot. I have also seen that what I was studying is still there after. Maybe I will get back to it in a few minutes, and sometimes it waits until the next day, but still, it is there.

The other area has been housework. As my mother's health has fluctuated, I have been doing more of the housework. Sometimes I think I should do it all, and other times it seems important to still have her contribute in the ways she can, but there are some things that it is probably better for me to do anyway.

Growing up, Mom cleaned everything thoroughly, and she did the basics every day. She had her own rug shampooer. She didn't use that every day, but cleaning the bathrooms, dusting, windows, vacuuming and floors were done every day.

Not only have I found that I can't quite keep up with that, but since the Norovirus flew through our house I have been wanted to do a thorough surface cleaning of everything to make sure that no seeds of a new epidemic are waiting to sprout. My ideas for how much should be doable over the course of a day have been sadly mistaken.

Still, I have found that the work remains. It's not that frequency doesn't matter; there is a big difference between cleaning the toilets every other day and trying to get away with every three or four days. Frankly, that part is kind of disturbing. But if you can do one thing every other day, than that opens up a slot on the alternating days for a different task that can probably be okay every other day instead of daily.

The week that segued from long hospital visits to illness did not see any vacuuming done. I did not feel great about that. Nonetheless, everyone survived.

There are judgments to be made, and give and take. Perhaps part of making it all work is keeping enough of an eye on things to see what needs attention now and what can wait another day.

I have for some time wanted to do a series of posts on that topic, because cleanliness is a factor in provident living, and people don't always know all of the parts of it. Information can be harder to find that you would think.

That is on deck, but before that I want to spend some time on emergency preparedness. I should be starting that next week, but I still think it was important to talk about this today. When you are preparing for emergencies, it is very easy to panic about how much needs to be done, and whether it can be done soon enough. That will not help.

You can sense what areas are more important to address first. You can get good ideas for how to accomplish what you need. You can do things in wisdom and order, and exercise faith.

It can be enough time.