I was so excited about the first load of laundry in this story, I hung it on the line. And then took a picture.

I’ve been working nights for more than ten years. During that time, we’ve added 6 kids to our family, for a total of seven. Laundry started out being primarily my responsibility, with unloading folded baskets of laundry delegated to whichever kids were capable of delivering piles where they needed to go without unfolding everything again.

As our family grew, I taught my big kids how to do their own laundry. That starts at age seven.  That leaves me responsible for laundry for my husband, the four Littles, myself, and whatever family laundry is generated, including bedding and towels. It ends up being a minimum of two loads a day on most days.

On weekends that I worked, I understood that whatever shape I left our laundry room in when I left for work, it would be the same or worse when I came back to it later that weekend after sleeping off my shift. That was ok for a long time. But with a household of nine, losing an entire day of doing laundry is no longer feasible. It was taking two or three days to get caught up again after one night shift and a subsequent day of sleeping.

Since the Chaplain works full-time, I kept quiet about it for a long time. Laundry was my job, after all. And it was a chore I actually enjoyed. But in recent months, my frustration grew. Even without a night shift, many days I ended up behind with the laundry – either with a house littered with baskets of clean, unfolded laundry, baskets of folded laundry that the kids hadn’t unloaded, or piles of dirty laundry that hadn’t been washed. Making that a certainty on work weekends was a burden I no long was willing to bear alone.

Often, weekends are when my big kids find the time to do their own laundry. Certain Bigs start a load but don’t follow it through to completion without a reminder (*cough* Two and Three *cough*). So not only is family laundry building up, there are extra hampers and baskets from several other people as well. If I’m sleeping, I’m not around to remind anyone to turn over their loads.

One morning, I got home after a night shift, or woke up from sleeping one off, and came into the laundry room, with my shiny red washer and dryer that I really enjoy using, and I finally shared my frustration with the Chaplain over my inability to deal with the build up of laundry on work weekends.

Not wanting to add to his plate, I suggested he have one of our big kids start an extra load during the day on Saturdays after I work a night shift. And he did.

Then one day recently, we changed the sheets on our bed. It’s a chore which we finally started doing together a couple of years ago because it’s so much easier with two people working together. I mentioned that if he wanted to do one better than taking the dirty sheets downstairs to the laundry room, he could start a load with them.

And he did.

And then three days this week, he started a load of laundry before he left for work in the morning.

The first day, I didn’t notice right away. It was the week I was doing standardized testing with the kids for school, and I was busy trying to keep the Littles occupied so that that Bigs could concentrate. We spent more time in the dining room than usual, since I was administering the tests at our dining room table. So I ended up washing the dining room windows, because I had to keep seeing how dirty they were. I didn’t make it into the laundry room for a long time.

When I figured it out, I sent a text to the Chaplain with heart eyes, and some other enthusiastic emojis.

The second day he started a load, I noticed right away, sent another text of thanks, and basked in a satisfied glow.

The third day started off busy again and I didn’t see that another load had been started until mid morning. When I finally stuck my head in the laundry room, I sent another quick text of thanks.

In all my relationships, in all areas of my life, and even in my relationship with God, I feel like I have to be doing something to matter. If I’m not doing something: cleaning, building, making, organizing, DOING, I am lazy. I’m not pulling my weight, and I lack worth. I know, oversimplification.

But I realized as I hit send on the text, that sense of already having done something just by existing, waking up this morning and walking down the stairs and finding a load of laundry had already been washed? That was what self acceptance feels like.

I didn’t do the load of laundry, and actually, the Chaplain hadn’t either, but we both had a sense of accomplishment from its being done.

I liked the way that felt. I would like more of that. It made me a little sad that the realization was so mind blowing for me when I sent that text.

It goes back to this, that since we are made in the image of God, we are enough just by existing. It’s one thing to say that. It’s much harder to live it.

So, do you have that baseline sense of worth that is present no matter what? Is it something you have to be intentional about? What does it feel like? Have you figured out how to make that feeling stay around?