Maintaining Mudrooms and Preserving Prayer

Nicole Berlucchi contemplates how making time for daily spiritual practices is as essential as keeping a lid on clutter in the house.

I don’t know if you have a mudroom at your house, but ours is the last place you pass through before leaving for the day and the first stop when you get home for the day. It’s the place shoes and socks are stored, coolers, beach and pool bags, hats, sports equipment, umbrellas and more. With four kids constantly on the go, it can be a challenge to maintain, but without regular maintenance after a few days, it’s a complete disaster.

As I cleaned up the complete disarray before some friends came over this weekend, I remembered what I had envisioned this area to be when we first built our house. Beautifully decorated, a picture of order and loveliness … not so much in reality, and I was annoyed. If one child had taken the time to close their sock drawer, the space might look a little cleaner. Or if one kid had put their shoes away after Mass or after school, fewer shoes would be lying out. If someone had hung the pool bag up after they found the goggles they needed for swimming … I could go on and on … but whatever it was, I would have less to clean up.

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Why is it that in the moment the laziness gets the best of us? It is “quicker” to leave the sock drawer open, to drop your shoes on the rug instead of putting them on the shelf. But in the long run, one pair of shoes turns into 12 pairs of shoes, and you have a huge mess. I have tried explaining this to my kids over and over and they still tend to end up resorting to drop and go.

I felt God tapping me on the shoulder: take note … there’s a lesson here. You know that prayer routine of yours that’s gone off the rails … maybe time to get back to it. I had been waking up early; I had a vision like the glossy mudroom picture that could translate into what I hoped my prayer time could become. I had a more meager version of my prayer life in the works, but lately, I can’t seem to get moving in the morning. I get out of bed right before I have to drive my highschooler to school instead of an hour before. This lazy routine has impacted some of the reading I do as part of my morning prayer and as a result, I feel my thought wheel for the day more messy than usual.

When I do spiritual reading in the morning, I think about throughout the day. I like to simmer on it, as I mentioned in one of my cooking posts. But without it, I find myself pulled to social media or thinking about things that annoy me, or dwelling on a comment that is up for interpretation. Without that daily spiritual reading, I let more clutter than I realize crowd my mind. When one day turns into one week, my mood can even be impacted because not only am I in a mind rut, but I also know I have to get out of the rut. That feels like a bigger project than usual. Overcoming one day of sleeping late isn’t that hard, the habit should come back easy, but switching out of over a week of sleeping later, that’s going to challenge me. I shouldn’t have let it go so long! Getting up earlier is hard! I don’t care what you say, early birds!

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The reality is, I know I’m better for it, when I stick to daily spiritual reading. I know my mind is thinking about loftier things, maybe things I can’t grasp yet, but things that I am turning over in my mind, heart and soul. Sometimes it’s one of those incomprehensible facets of God which send me into amazement even though I still can’t wrap my head around it. Maybe it is simply a philosophy of a saint. God was reminding me that it’s better to have some one thing to think about throughout the day, rather than to let your mind be cluttered with a useless mess of thoughts churned up between social media, news headlines and our own self-doubt … in other words, God was saying: Prioritize your prayers. It keeps your house in order.

Click to tweet:
Without daily spiritual reading, I let more clutter than I realize crowd my mind. #CatholicMom

The best spiritual reading is, of course, Scripture, but there are plenty of other resources out there that I take advantage of as well. But I will leave you with a Scripture verse that came to mind as I was writing this: 0ne that reminds us that keeping our mind in order is a very good thing indeed! Hopefully, it will motivate an earlier wakeup time tomorrow!

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)

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