Babies, Bathwater, and Partial Solutions

I have a fantasy image of how my life should run. In this fantasy, I wake up early every morning to exercise and spend quiet time in prayer, meditation, and coffee. Every single day involves quality connecting time with each member of my family. My home is very clean, well-organized, and beautifully decorated. We regularly spend time with friends, family, and our faith community. In this fantasy world, I am creatively engaged, cook a lot, and read a book a week. My husband and I have weekly Date Nights.

The reality is really, really different from the fantasy.

In reality, my kids don’t sleep well, and most mornings I would have to wake up in the middle of the night if I wanted to have time to exercise and have quiet time before they woke up. My house is never completely clean and organized. Date night is expensive and babysitters are hard to schedule. Macaroni and cheese is a dinner time staple.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. There is so, so much goodness and beauty in this season of life. It's just very different from the fantasy. I am learning to live in and value the chaos and the mess. I am letting go of the ideal and enjoying the reality.

But I have noticed that sometimes, in my process of letting go of the fantasy, I feel tempted to give up on the ideals altogether. For example, a few years ago, a weekly date night was absolutely impossible. We had three tiny children, very limited available sitters, and very limited financial resources. It felt tempting to just give up on ever getting out just the two of us, and for a long time we didn’t even try to make it happen.

It can be so easy to get discouraged when the things we want don’t happen easily or seem straight out impossible. We can feel tempted to give up.

There are times and seasons where completely letting go of those ideals and expectations is necessary and appropriate. Where we absolutely need to function in survival mode. There are times when this is totally acceptable.

And there are times when we need to look for partial solutions instead of giving up altogether. I first heard the term partial solutions from Tsh Oxenreider, who talks about the importance of finding small, mini solutions to problems where the full goal you are seeking seems impossible to reach.

Maybe you can’t train for a marathon right now, but as a partial solution you can go on daily walks while pushing a stroller. Maybe sick kids keep you from the kind of church engagement you are looking for, but you can go when everyone is healthy and listen to sermons online when they are not. Maybe you can’t go out on a date, but you can put the kids down early, get takeout, ban cell phones, and have date night at home. Maybe you can’t afford a weekend away, but would richly benefit from a vacation right at home.

There are so many ways that we can get the good things we are looking for, if we can only let go of our need for them to look a certain way.

I’ve always found the phrase, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” kind of disturbing, but it really gets at what I am talking about here. We don’t have to completely give up on the good things that we want or strive for because the full picture is out of reach in this season. We can be creative, we can be problem-solvers, and we can benefit from partial solutions.

#laurenshaw #counseling #relationships #problemsolving #partialsolutions #arlingtoncounselingassociates #thearlingtoncenter #parenting