This is a continuation of my musings in The Meanest Mommy on the Block and probably the root of why I end up being so tired and short with my kids.

Several days after my grown-up temper tantrum and exasperation with my children, I was having my quiet time and these words popped out to me as I opened my Bible:

“her feet never stay at home;

now in the street, now in the squares,

at every corner she lurks”

As, my eyes skimmed up to the top of the page to see where I had even landed, I realized I was in Proverbs 7 “Warning Against the Adulteress.”

And that’s when my brain started turning and my heart started repenting.

I may not be a physical or sexual adulteress, but I can very easily be an adulteress with my TIME.  I so quickly want to yield my time to different “great, worthy causes for the Kingdom” or even to just getting alot of stuff accomplished.  But this is not my time to give.  It has already been pledged, married to another.

First, it has been pledged to those early morning appointments, when I get to sit at the feet of my Savior and allow His life to be breathed afresh in me.  But I often cheat Him (and me!) of those times, by staying up too late and then hitting the snooze button several times the next morning.

Secondly, I cheat my sweet husband. I remember it vividly.  The week before our enormous yard sale I was diligently working on Craigslist postings, and Danny comes home at 10pm after a long day of work.  I muttered a “hey, babe” and DID NOT EVEN LOOK UP FROM MY COMPUTER AT HIM. Thats adultery. of another kind. My feet were not at home. My heart was not at home, I was off dreaming up big dreams and working hard to accomplish them.  I was “now in the streets, now in the squares” , NOT by my husband’s side being the helpmate that I was created and designed to be.  He was not my first mission, and he could feel it.

Then, there are the kids, who need their Mommy’s attention, and patience, and discipline, and outpouring, and labor.  Yes, they need my labor.  They need their clothes washed, folded, put away.  They need their meals made and cleaned up after.  They need my physical energies being put into creating (and more challenging, maintaining!) a place of order in which to grow, explore, imagine, develop, and learn.

There is only so much of me.

When I immediately volunteer myself for different servant roles, when I dream up big projects to do to help others, when I keep running myself on adrenaline so that I can manage to say “yes” to every event, I am using up what has already been put on the altar. It has been pledged ON the altar of sacrifice “Therefore, in view of God’s mercy, present your bodies as living sacrifices” and AT the altar of my wedding to my Darling “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.”

And when “my feet never stay at home” and I am “now in the street, now in the squares” I am giving myself to a lesser lover.  I am not being faithful to my first Calling.  My Lord, My Head, and my Heirs. I prostitute myself to the lover of “Productivity” or the lover “Feeling Effective for God” and they are one night stands that give brief satisfaction but can take a death-dealing toll on my relationship with my Savior, my husband, and my kids.

So when Danny has to pick up the broken pieces of his exhausted, impatient, temper-tantruming wife, who is being the helpmate now?  Its not me, I’m good for nothing. I have been the adulteress.