At home, I can always find something to do. Always. Floors must be swept, dishes must be done, the little guy decided to rearrange the kitchen pantry, my husband’s boots left sand tracked across the house–even when there’s nothing to do, I still find something.

It drives my husband nuts and he’s constantly asking me to stop because my perpetual doing puts him on edge, but I feel like I can’t help it–there’s just always something that must be done. 

Maybe it’s a mom thing. Maybe it’s that I own my house which is more incentive to keep it nice or maybe it’s that my son likes to lick the floors so I want to keep them clean. Maybe it’s just that mess compels me to go hide in a corner.

Whatever it is, I rarely sit down and do nothing, and when I do it’s only because my son has gone down for a nap and I’ve once again checked everything off my list and made the house immaculate.

I didn’t realize what a problem it’s become until the weekend we arrived at my in-laws home in Ohio over Christmas. Three weeks dedicated solely to spending time with family, eating good food, and relaxing. Of course, with the whole family (13 people!) in the home there was no shortage of things to do, but there was also no shortage of people to help and all those people also spent their days playing with their nephew/grandson so I was left with hours of free time.

Let me tell you, I had no idea what to do with myself.

I started looking for things to do. After all, sitting down for more than half an hour at a time, going into our room and taking a nap in the middle of the day when my son was still awake–it felt so wrong, like I was cheating. Moms don’t get to do things like that, right? Really, I felt lost. What was I to do with my free time? I didn’t have any hobbies or books I was into or TV series I was hooked on or friends I could go see. When I brought this up with my husband, he asked me what do you feel like doing? I suppose that’s a question that takes practice to answer because honestly, I had no idea. I was so used to making myself busy I didn’t even know what I wanted.

After a few wonderful weeks with family in Ohio, it was time to come home. My husband recognized my inability to relax and that I had been completely overdoing it at home, and he insisted that I begin asking him for help around the house–he wanted to cook and do the dishes and play with our son for an hour in the evenings so I could get some dedicated time to myself, which I appreciated more than I could voice.

But I never asked.

He worked all day and I stayed home, so how could I request that he do more?

Not only had I forgotten how to relax, when I was given the chance I didn’t want to take it. Finally, one day, he stopped me during a particularly frenzied doing-everything-at-once spree and he told me to go sit down and ask him for help. Although I insisted I didn’t need help, he knew better and he made me ask him.

I stalled. The words simply would not come out of my mouth, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to ask him for help in exchange for relaxation.

How did I get to the point mentally that I literally could not bring myself to accept help so I could sit down and rest? It seems like a ridiculous problem–who on earth argues about wanting to do the work?–but it was real.

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In the weeks that have passed since, I’ve learned that a lot of it comes down to feeling guilty. Guilty because I’m not the one who leaves every morning at 6 and comes home after 4 to bring home a paycheck I do nothing to earn–my work is at home and when there’s work to do around the home (which there always is) I should be doing it, right?!

There may be some truth to that. As a homemaker, my primary responsibilities are to love my husband, love my children, and take care of the home, and it’s work I love to do. My husband’s primary responsibility it to love us, which, of course, does mean helping, but it’s also to provide for the family. There was just somewhere along the way I lost sight of working in love and instead started working for control and because I felt guilty if I didn’t.

I forgot how to relax, but there was a lot more to it than that–it became an issue of control; one that was breaking my family’s spirits. 

As I’ve been working over that challenge, I’ve also been learning how to accept help and allow myself breaks even when there might still be more to do. How?

1. My husband literally had to make me repeat after him the first time he wouldn’t accept no for an answer. Yes, clearly I am stubborn and that’s how bad it had become. It went something like this: Babe? …Babe…. Can you please do the dishes for me tonight? But I can just do them– CAN YOU PLEASE DO– Okay, fine! If you’re not doing anything else and if it’s not too much to ask, would you please– Babe… Okay, okay. Can you please do the dishes for me tonight? *cue scowl that he forced me to ask*
2. We basically repeated that process over and over again until I would ask him on my own. He even had to make me leave the room a few times because I kept insisting on getting up to help after he had already taken on the task.
3. I began to schedule times to work. For example: I will get all the cleaning done as soon as my son goes down for a nap. Then I will write a blog post. Then I will do the dishes and prep dinner. Then I will sit down or take a nap or do something that I want to do until he wakes up. I didn’t just do work as I found it because I would be working forever–I decided on a set amount I was going to do and then I stuck to it.
4. Seriously, practice makes perfect. Crazy that I had to practice relaxing, right? That’s what happens when control takes over and you get stuck in a pattern of never-ending doing.

I have to take a second and brag on my husband. That man is patient with me through my stubbornness and psycho-cleaning tendencies and refusal to sit down and recently, he’s taken on many of the responsibilities around the house that I had previously done myself. Every day, he looks for new ways to help and then he actually does it. Our lives are about to change in a major way in the next few weeks and months as the military has big plans for him, but until then he is committed to helping in every way he can. How amazing is he? I am so, so thankful for that man.

Of course, I’m still a work in progress. Sometimes I get to the end of the day and I’ve been running around like a crazy person doing fifty million things all at one time with a toddler on my hip while I juggle and jump through hoops–you get the picture–and those days generally end with me slumping down on the sofa and taking lots of deep breaths. Oh wait, what a perfect description of tonight! Hah.

That’s motherhood. There are days like that because a husband and kids who need snuggles and food and loving and a home that doesn’t clean itself are sure a lot of work.

But yes, sometimes there are still days I bring it on myself. This is what I’m working on–learning how to relax again.

Friend, if this is you, all I can tell you is this: there comes a point where we’re so stuck in our patterns that we need to really focus on intentionality to break those exhausting habits. It seems like relaxing should come naturally but sometimes it doesn’t, and that’s when you need to start planning your time and taking advantage of the help that’s offered.

I may have forgotten how to relax, crazy as the prospect sounds, but with practice and the steady support of a husband who cares deeply, I am remembering. Even looking at that sentence makes me feel silly. Really–who on earth “forgets how to relax?” What does that even mean?

But that was me, given the chance to take a break and not wanting to take it because I didn’t know what to do with myself, because I couldn’t stop and breathe. 

There’s this song I used to listen to in my days where I was much better at balancing work and rest, a song about God speaking to us in the midst of the daily grind. Perhaps they’re lyrics I need to go back to more often: