We were finishing up dinner and I just found myself needing a moment of quiet. Between school work, house work and correcting unhappy hearts all day, I felt it. You know that feeling you get when you’re just done and need a moment of silence. The irrational side of my brain told me getting in the car and running away sounded nice but the practical side of my brain told me a shower would be enough. I told Ryan I just needed 5 minutes alone and he said “it’s fine, go take a shower.”

As I got into the shower, the only thing I felt was the warm water on my back. The only sound I heard was the water hitting the floor. It was quiet. My body felt a sense of relief and stillness. It was what I needed.

Just as I was settling in and relaxing, I heard the bathroom door open. “Mama, do you think I need a shower?” my 5 year old asked me while peering around the shower curtain. “Sure, if you want to take one when mama gets out you can.” I replied to her. “But mama, I need you.” she said. I wanted to respond with “But mama needs a break or but mama just wants to be alone.” Didn’t she hear the conversation I had with her daddy at the dinner table? I felt myself growing frustrated and wanting to be unkind with the way I responded because she was ruining my quiet time. Why is it that when someone does something to disrupt us, our first reaction is to grow angry? Why is it? It’s because we are self centered people and the biggest idol and addiction we have is not outside of us, it’s inside us.

We live in a world that tells us we deserve ‘me time.’ We need to be making sure we are filling up our cups. We need self care. Do what makes you happy. And what do all of those little sayings point to? Ourselves. We live in a self centered world that brain washes us into thinking we deserve to do what we want to do. That if you don’t get your way, you should throw and fit and demand everyone to know about it. If you’re married, think about what how you respond when your husband doesn’t do what you think he should do. Do you complain to your friends? When a group of women get together, often times the center of their conversation is all the things their husbands are not doing AND they try to outdo each other. One lady will mention her husband isn’t doing XY and Z and another lady will usually not even let the first lady finish her complaining without interrupting her and start telling every one what her husband is not doing. How terrible of a father he is. How lazy he is. What he doesn’t do. The lists go on and on. But what if the husbands complained about their wives like the wives complain about them? It would be World War 3. It would not end well. We complain because we want what we want and we want everyone else to do what we tell them to do. We want control. We want others to bring us happiness and make our lives easier. We want alone time. We want to do what pleases ourselves but life is not about our happiness and our contentment.

Anytime in scripture when Jesus needed alone time, He didn’t go on a guys only trip. He didn’t go shopping. He didn’t go complain to the disciples. What does scripture tell us that He did? He went away in the quiet to pray to His Father. The Savior of the world, went away to pray. He got down on His knees. He spent time in prayer. He prayed The Fathers will be done. The total opposite of what the world is telling us. Not our will, but Yours. It’s so easy for us, as humans, to listen to the loudness of the world. To get sucked into it. I do it every single day in the way I respond to my husband and my children when they do something that disrupts the quiet. Even as I type this at 6 A.M. Every morning I try to get up early before everyone so I can have some quiet but this morning, one of the children woke up and now the quiet I was expecting, isn’t quiet anymore. What is my first internal reaction when things don’t go the way I wanted them to go?

“Sure, you can take a shower with mama.” I told her. I knew that in that moment she needed me and I needed to let go of my exceptions of what I wanted.

Lord, break me of my selfish ambitions and pride.