I Can Never Get Caught Up—and That’s a Good Thing


The view from the dining room, 2 December 2010. The 20-degree weather is coming in a few days, but for now–and again next year–it’s beautiful….and life keeps moving forward. Photo copyright by Lorna Tedder.

I used to kick myself all the time because I could never get caught up.  No matter how many hundreds of things I scratched off my to-do list on any given weekend, I would fall into bed on Sunday night feeling like a failure because there was always so much more to do.  My last words as I fell asleep every Sunday night were usually, “But I didn’t get hardly anything done!”

My mom, at 81, will often tell me that something needs maintenance and she can never get it all finished before it needs maintenance again.  It’s a chore that never seems to cease.  She despairs about it, but I’ve come to realize that it’s a good thing.

I stand before the mirror and frown at the cut on my lip.  There’s one on my finger, too, and a particularly bad burn on my hand, but it’s the one on my lip that annoys me more.  It’s the one that keeps me from giving or accepting a kiss, and I’d like to be giving lots of kisses at the moment.    It’s been there for about 5 days and every day, it gets better and better.

The repair process—the old cells replaced by new cells—continues, the process moving forward, and I’m glad the processes of life are never done.  My lip gets better every day, the cut smaller, better healed.

Life keeps moving forward, propelled by the processes of regeneration, even the small and annoying tasks that claim the most mundane moments of our days.  It’s never done because I am not finished with life.


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