Guilt

I hate guilt. I think its ridiculous. Yet, its always there. Lurking over everything. I'm beginning to think that the moment your first baby pops out, the guilt gene is activated. Motherhood=guilt. Why is that? Why do I lay in bed at night and think about all the things I didn't do right? I yelled too much, I lost my patience over something stupid, I should have slowed down enough to help one of my kids instead of being frustrated, we should be reading the scriptures instead of watching Survivor....the list is endless. I often carry one day's guilt over into the next. Then the guilt just starts piling up like laundry.

I've tried an assorted variety of things to stifle the guilt. I usually bake, somehow thinking that a chocolate cake can make up for all those things I really don't want to do, but should. Last night I made potato soup, homemade bread and a chocolate zuchinni cake. Took forever. But then I had to fight, kick, and scream with people to study for their spelling tests. Now I have guilt for putting all my efforts into the wrong priorities....I was the only one who ate the cake.

Do you think men lay in bed at night and think about all the crappy things they did that day? Do you think they wonder if they are a loser parent? Kindof a stupid question, isn't it? As a teenager, I can remember looking through my mom's wallet one day. I pulled out a small piece of paper that had a message typed on it, "Satan influences a woman by telling her she is not good enough or doing enough. Satan influences a man by telling him, you're doing just fine." Interesting.

My grandma told me that when she was a young mom, she would get up at 3:00 am to do the laundry. She wanted to make sure that she had her laundry hanging on the line outside before the lady next door. 3 o'clock in the morning! Just so she wouldn't have guilt that the mom next door had her's out by 4 o'clock....maybe guilt gets passed from generation to generation....

So, here I sit, reading other people's blogs while I should be cleaning toilets, writing kind words in my children's journals (don't have a clue where they are), and planning wholesome activities for my kids to do while they quietly watch Conference this weekend. I already know that none of these things will get done. I'm going to try and stifle the guilt in a different way today, I'm painting the bathroom. And I'm sure at some point, I'll be baking....