Finishing

[2026 me here to say the content of this post is fine, but Nancy Campbell is one of the many authors who left my bookshelf as I moved to a more connected style of parenting and was also one of the authors whom I was glad I had already jettisoned with the rise of patriarchal christian nationalism. Some of her writing is extremely unhealthy, especially in terms of raising children with a trauma history.]

I have been reading through Nancy Campbells' devotional book, 100 Day of Blessing.  (Highly recommended, by the way.)  While I am always challenged and encouraged by her, I have been particularly convicted about her thoughts on finishing.  Finishing a job, what we set out to do, just completing things.  She points out that God never leaves things half done... He always completes and finishes what He sets out to do.  Even if we think He is taking too long, He still completes everything in His own time.  We also want our children to be people who complete things; who are reliable and can be counted on to do what they say they will.  This is where I need to look carefully at my own life.  If I want my children to be this type of person, am I modelling this type of behavior?

If I'm honest, I have to answer with a great big... sometimes.  And this has been a struggle for me even as a child.  I'm great at starting things.  I love dreaming up big projects, but when it comes time to do the actual work, I'm more likely to be focusing on my next big project and really not so much interested in the actual work of seeing the past idea to completion.  Perhaps it wouldn't be an issue if I were content to just dream up stuff, but that lack of actual follow through does irk me more than a little bit.

It's not just big things that I struggle with the idea of finishing; it's also all the little things in my life.  I spend my day flitting from one activity to another, focusing on whatever has caught my attention at any given time.  By the end of the day I often have a dozen jobs, half done about the house, lying in my wake.  I realize that some of this is the nature of motherhood.  Our darling little charges do take precedence over whatever activity we are in the middle of, and that is how is should be.  The trouble for me comes after I've helped the child.  Through lack of focus, I then flit to another activity without returning to the first one and seeing it through.  There are often days I go to bed with this heavy weight of all the uncompleted projects hanging over my head.

This week I'm going to focus on finishing.  It will be a kind of experiment.  First I want to discover if it is even possible to be focused enough to finish one task before beginning another with a household of small children.  Second, I want to see if I am more focused on this goal, if I can make my life feel a little calmer and less out of control.  Because that is how half done projects make me feel... out of control.  I'm done feeling like A.A. Milne's Old Sailor.

Does anyone else feel this way?  Would you care to join my in the challenge to try to finish things?  I'm going to keep you updated this next week and let you know how it goes... and you can comment and share how it is going with you.  And perhaps we can encourage one another.