Recently, our life has been rather busy. I always say that reluctantly because I know people with busier schedules (and more kids) have it “worse” than we do – but by our standards, we have been busy. We are always thankful for a weekend of “nothing” so we can catch our breath or catch up on other things.
We were gifted a weekend of nothing a few weeks ago. When we had seen it in the near future, my husband suggested we make it a “project weekend” – basically, a weekend devoted to all of the things we kept putting off or hadn’t had the time to complete. So, we created a shared list (thank you iCloud notes) and added to it as we thought of things in the week leading up to “project weekend”.
As the Saturday approached, I was so excited. I LOVE checking things off of lists. In fact, I had created a separate list of “regular” weekend tasks to complete while also working on the joint list (things like laundry, cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming… usual upkeep types of things).
Then Saturday came. We all woke up, ate breakfast, and off we went. Most of my things to complete were inside, while my husband was tackling the outside stuff. As we approached lunch, the list was nearly halfway complete. By midafternoon when it was time to take our son to basketball practice, the list was completed.
At the beginning of the day, the list had felt so long and daunting. But in the end, it only took us 5 or so hours. All of our tasks were ones we had been simply putting off (other than hanging the outdoor Christmas lights before it got too cold – don’t worry, they aren’t on!). None of the tasks were hard. My husband and I aren’t typically procrastinators. We thrive on being efficient and maximizing our time. We probably could have done any of these tasks in less than an hour. And yet… it took a weekend of “nothing” for us to even begin to tackle them.
When we sat down at the end of the day, we felt so accomplished – I suppose a bunch of small things checked off a list will do that for you. I’ve thought about our project day a few times since it happened, and it’s forced me to wonder (more than once) why we never just… did the tasks? Why did we have to make a list of multiple tasks in order to simply complete multiple small tasks?
It’s not lost on me that this is kind of like Confession. It’s really easy to let little sins pile up and wait until we’ve ‘collected enough’ to feel like it’s time to go to the sacrament. Confession repairs our broken relationship with God and others, and the longer we wait, the harder it is to love. Consequently if we delay, Confession can start to feel daunting and we may become even more lethargic approaching God for forgiveness. And if we are not careful, months or years of avoiding the sacrament could lead to us falling out of love with God.
So in the end, the task is simple: go to Confession as often as you can, and do so with the heart of repairing your relationship with God. Don’t let yourself have a long list of sins that hinders your ability to hear His voice. Because in the end, it’s a simple task that won’t take very long to complete. And even though it may be difficult or uncomfortable to repeatedly confess sins that we repeat, our relationship with God should be our top priority, and His love and forgiveness are waiting for us.
