A Year of Grace
You are now looking at a fully fledged CAREER WOMAN! Can you believe it?! I thought for sure that I would be a stay at home Mum for the rest of my life, but when you see the dream job you have to go for it right?! I'm now the children's worker at my local church and it feels so good to wake up and dress for work, to spend my days writing emails and structuring rotas and just generally totter around an office looking all important and things. I have the code to special rooms and a magic keycard that lets me into the secret locked doors and it's all very exciting!
Our family structure has totally changed. Thankfully this job's start date came at perfect timing because Lee is off for 18 days in his shift pattern. In time my role will go to Flexi time, but whilst handover is happening I'm in the office everyday making sure I know everything I need to before my line manager goes off on her maternity leave. It's meant Lee and I have totally swapped roles and boy, are we having a laugh with it!
For years it's been the standard that when Lee gets home from work he's been asked (by me) to take the kids and give me some time to think without a child screaming for something and deafening me in the process. I hadn't realised how much strain that puts on him until I came crawling in last week, brain a complete mush after a day learning about team admin, and Lee commented that he wanted to go off for a bit and lie down. I almost cried. I'm not joking, I fell asleep on the way home from work last week (I wasn't driving I'd like to add), I was that tired. It's worth noting that I'm doing pretty detailed hand over stuff and there is a LOT of info to process, so I'm extra tired because it's all 'new', but still, a full day of work is equally as tiring as a full day of 'housewifing'.
We're learning to have extra grace for each other as we fully throw ourselves into our year of graft. Lee spent a good 20 minutes today telling me about all the work that he did in the house only for Adelais to come along and undo it all again. "I only managed two loads of washing today Hollie! Two! I just couldn't put her down". Life is hard when you're responsible for the running of the house and, whilst he's never said it, I suspect a part of him still wonders what I actually do all day whenever he comes home from work and it looks like a bull has been rampaging through our home.
We've got rid of the idea that we have set jobs. It used to be that Lee's jobs were the dishwasher, emptying the bins and folding the clothes away, but with both of us doing shifts, managing two businesses, organising 3 children, 2 cats, a dog and 50 billion birds, it's easier to have a generalised list and we BOTH are responsible for ticking stuff off of it. And it doesn't have to be an equal break down either. We're really focussing on out-serving each other in this season so that we can give each other the ability to feel rested, focus on our goals, and also free up couple time too.
It's a challenging season where we're learning to hold our tongue more, serve more, give more, all for the sake of chasing the dream we were given as a family not so long ago. We knew it was going to be hard in a physical sense for this year as we learn to juggle it all and become masters of productivity, but I hadn't taken much thought about the fact that that means it's going to be a year of learning to graft at our characters too - it's not much worth if we've managed to buy the land and set up the business but we both hate each other and all communication between us has broken down.
I imagine we'll end up learning ALOT about ourselves over these coming months - we're a week into the new year and already are working out a lot about each other! I'm pleased for the opportunity so far to have walked in my husband's shoes and him in mine. We've really come to understand what life feels like for each other, and so know wholeheartedly what we can both do to support each other better and what the other needs. We've always been a couple good in a crisis, always becoming some kind of super team whenever one hits, and this feels kind of similar. It's a season of chaos and our team work is more on point now than in the day-to-day. What's even more wonderful is that when one person falters the other is right there casting vision again and reminding them of what the goal is. Our hearts are constantly being excited to see this dream met!
So there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes here but the most surprising h
as been the work on ourselves. It turns out it's not only going to be a year of graft, but a year of grace.
Our family structure has totally changed. Thankfully this job's start date came at perfect timing because Lee is off for 18 days in his shift pattern. In time my role will go to Flexi time, but whilst handover is happening I'm in the office everyday making sure I know everything I need to before my line manager goes off on her maternity leave. It's meant Lee and I have totally swapped roles and boy, are we having a laugh with it!
For years it's been the standard that when Lee gets home from work he's been asked (by me) to take the kids and give me some time to think without a child screaming for something and deafening me in the process. I hadn't realised how much strain that puts on him until I came crawling in last week, brain a complete mush after a day learning about team admin, and Lee commented that he wanted to go off for a bit and lie down. I almost cried. I'm not joking, I fell asleep on the way home from work last week (I wasn't driving I'd like to add), I was that tired. It's worth noting that I'm doing pretty detailed hand over stuff and there is a LOT of info to process, so I'm extra tired because it's all 'new', but still, a full day of work is equally as tiring as a full day of 'housewifing'.
We're learning to have extra grace for each other as we fully throw ourselves into our year of graft. Lee spent a good 20 minutes today telling me about all the work that he did in the house only for Adelais to come along and undo it all again. "I only managed two loads of washing today Hollie! Two! I just couldn't put her down". Life is hard when you're responsible for the running of the house and, whilst he's never said it, I suspect a part of him still wonders what I actually do all day whenever he comes home from work and it looks like a bull has been rampaging through our home.
We've got rid of the idea that we have set jobs. It used to be that Lee's jobs were the dishwasher, emptying the bins and folding the clothes away, but with both of us doing shifts, managing two businesses, organising 3 children, 2 cats, a dog and 50 billion birds, it's easier to have a generalised list and we BOTH are responsible for ticking stuff off of it. And it doesn't have to be an equal break down either. We're really focussing on out-serving each other in this season so that we can give each other the ability to feel rested, focus on our goals, and also free up couple time too.
It's a challenging season where we're learning to hold our tongue more, serve more, give more, all for the sake of chasing the dream we were given as a family not so long ago. We knew it was going to be hard in a physical sense for this year as we learn to juggle it all and become masters of productivity, but I hadn't taken much thought about the fact that that means it's going to be a year of learning to graft at our characters too - it's not much worth if we've managed to buy the land and set up the business but we both hate each other and all communication between us has broken down.
I imagine we'll end up learning ALOT about ourselves over these coming months - we're a week into the new year and already are working out a lot about each other! I'm pleased for the opportunity so far to have walked in my husband's shoes and him in mine. We've really come to understand what life feels like for each other, and so know wholeheartedly what we can both do to support each other better and what the other needs. We've always been a couple good in a crisis, always becoming some kind of super team whenever one hits, and this feels kind of similar. It's a season of chaos and our team work is more on point now than in the day-to-day. What's even more wonderful is that when one person falters the other is right there casting vision again and reminding them of what the goal is. Our hearts are constantly being excited to see this dream met!So there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes here but the most surprising h
as been the work on ourselves. It turns out it's not only going to be a year of graft, but a year of grace.
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