Much of the trouble with motherhood comes down to time. Either we don’t have enough, we’re trying to live three lifetimes at once; or we are adrift… bored…with too many vacant hours. We struggle with proportion and order and finding the right substance to fill the void. Urgency undermines a lot of good. We feel a heavy pressure to solve immediate problems at the expense of slower, apparently postponable priorities. Like motherhood.

To spend time well, we need convictions which govern our urgencies. These convictions take time to form and even longer to live. The time we need is easily forfeited. If you’re following along with Light Duties, you’re already processing these things.

We need time to figure out what we think. We then need more time to figure out how to do what we think. Then more time still is needed to do the things we’ve become convinced of. The further in you get, the more time has been spent. When we lose time because other things are more urgent, we get stuck with the painful effects of compounding confusion. This confusion punctures our life as Christians, as well as our kids’ discipleship. Giving ourselves time to think can feel risky because there seems so little of it to spare. But being swallowed by the frenzy of the urgent, without clear thoughts to measure its merit, will crowd out the good we’ve forgotten to aim for.

Coming to a new year, I am convicted all over again that my saddle on the horse of time is sliding off. The interrupted rhythm of this time of year forces the bolted horse to pull up and graze for a moment. This is my time to re-saddle and take the reins, to see the duties which have been entrusted to me and the urgent things which are choking them out. It’s a natural time (at least in Australia where a new calendar year marks a new academic year), to opt out of some routines in order to clear space for relationships and tasks which the Lord has deputed to me (you too?). Summer is the season to thin out the newly set cluster of fruit so the fewer pieces which remain can grow into their fullness, in time. Autumn’s fruit grows from Summer’s provisions.

I’m looking forward to the remaining territory we’ll cover in Light Duties (and I’m starting to get a glimpse of a possible horizon beyond that). Lord willing, we’ll keep clearing the maternal clutter, reorder the spaces and then imagine new, lively ways they can be filled.

(If you’ve missed the earlier articles, you can find them tabled in reading/listening order here).