It’s been two weeks since I posted. Since I did any writing, really, unless you count a bit of poetry in the wee hours of one sleepless morning. Now I’m finally here again, not at my desk–no, I’m in bed, with a wiggly baby in a onesie with smiling rainclouds on it lying next to me and Tom Chapin playing on Spotify because she loves music and that was a family favorite when I was a kid.

Life has changed.

Not only have I not written, I haven’t done much of anything else.

Laundry goes unfolded. It gets washed, dried, goes in the laundry basket, then gets taken straight out of the basket and worn. Then back in the washer. Essentially we’ve cut out the middle man.

I still haven’t unpacked from last weekend’s trip.

The bathroom sink never gets cleaned. In fact, let’s get real–the only bathroom cleaning that gets done at all lately is a quick scrub of the toilet bowl now and then.

We eat frozen meatballs twice a week.

And that’s without even mentioning the stack of baby shower thank-you notes needing to be written.

Instead, I spend about 85% of my time holding my baby. Either feeding her, playing with her, soothing her, or just cuddling her to sleep. Changing her. Bathing her. Coaxing baby smiles out of her. And when she is sleeping alone or my husband can take her for awhile, I use the time very intentionally. I have my quiet time with God, or cook, or eat, or exercise.

There are times–many of them–that I feel guilty about this. Not just because my house is a mess or because there’s no way I’ll get my next book published in the timeframe I wanted or because I’m letting down my Patreon subscribers–but simply because I’m not doing more. I’ll be laying beside my napping baby (she wakes up if I leave her) or just cuddling her while we watch Gilmore Girls, and I feel the urge. The urge to do something. Clean, write, go somewhere, create something, crochet, or read, or do something. Really anything. I feel the insistent instinct to be productive.

All this has taught me something important over the last few months. It has taught me just how much I idolize productivity.

I don’t mean “idolize” in a cute or funny sense as in “really really liking something” or even just “highly valuing it.” I mean truly idolizing. Like the golden calf the Israelites made when Moses was up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments.

Unable to simply be. Not content just to wait at the foot of the mountain and live life while waiting to hear what more God wants from me. Unwilling to trust that it’s okay to just be here, now, and move closer to the Promised Land later.

In desperation, I fashion my golden calves and expect them to satisfy me, when perhaps really what God actually wants from me is to sit here, at the foot of the mountain. To just be with Him, and just live. Take care of my daughter. Support my husband. And maybe eat frozen meatballs twice a week.

I stare longingly at my idol–at the highly busy and productive life I used to lead–but at the same time, distance makes me wonder. Is the goal in life really to be as productive as possible and do as much as you can? Or could it be that this incessant inner drive will leave me drinking bitter golden powder in the desert when I could be in the Promised Land already?

And then I remember that sometimes God sees productivity very differently than we do. That in His eyes, my relationship with my baby is of infinitely greater value than any of these other things. That I could get a thousand things done in one day, and still not be as faithful as I would have if I had just sat at His feet and tended this little lamb He has entrusted to me.

After all, there will always be laundry to fold and books to publish and hobbies to pursue. But these days when she is tiny and needs me to be her everything, to give her a secure foundation and to just be with her–these days will be over all too soon.

I remember this–and I am content to turn my back on all the golden statues in the world, sit at the foot of the mountain, and be faithful.