Summer Shorts Vol. 3: 500 Words from My New Book

Is this where it all began?

The Rules I’ve Made for Myself—

What: An essay that is exactly 500 words.

Why: I had the idea that limiting myself to 500 words would reduce the weird pressure I bring on myself about writing, while I’m busy with the final stages of releasing a book in October.

How: Intros and footnotes don’t count towards the 500. I write in a Google Doc and don’t cheat on the word count, and then I paste it into a Substack draft and add footnotes and the intro.

A little backstory: I became a Christian, then a wife and stepmom, then a mom and a homeschooler, all within a very fast few years of my life. They were wonderful years! But I was young and so much was changing and I just wanted to do things right. I was baptized on my 21st birthday and the retreat I write about below happened a year later, as I was gathering what I thought were the tools I needed to Do Life Correctly.

I have regrets of course. Our kids are all adults now, some with marriages and children of their own. Happily, thankfully, our daughters are women I want to be like and our sons are men I enjoy being around. They all survived my bleach-the-floors and schedule-every-second-of-the-day years, but I wish I had been more confident and less rule-bound in the early years. It took some time and heartache to realize no schedule or chart could control life, no book or method could guarantee success, and no list of rules could overrule a person’s personal decision. I made mistakes, such as is common to man, and I was saved by a Goodness that is always more beautiful than necessary.

The following 500 words (the brackets show where I had to make cuts to get the word count down) are from my book More Beautiful Than Necessary, from chapter two, “Calculus: A Study of Change”.

Summer Shorts Vol. 3: Is this where it all began?

At my first [...] retreat, I encounter an older woman whose wisdom I absorb like a dry sponge.¹ I don’t know her, but she’s a pastor’s wife so surely she has it all together. I have been a bona fide Christian for probably a year at this time—heavy on zeal and light on discernment—but I have come here with people I trust. I am expecting a lot from this retreat.

In her cabin one evening, the pastor’s wife introduces us to her card file method for managing her home and responsibilities. She has gleaned this wisdom from a popular author of the day and she passes it on to the desperate young women around her. We’ve been on the business end of a fire hose of emotions and hopes all day, scribbling earnest notes in our journals and marking pages in our crisp Bibles. We have been primed for this. I am only in her cabin because someone I’ve come with knows her well, making me privileged by association, and this afterglow of sorts feels like a ticket to the inside.

The system of using index cards to organize your life is not a nefarious plan. But to a young woman dabbling in control, it’s the gateway drug. I have prepared my veins.

First, you list every [...] task required for managing a home—all the maintenance things, like changing air filters, insulating pipes in winter, planting the garden, paying the bills, cleaning out the freezer, vacuuming carpets, dusting, et cetera. Then you sort the tasks into things to do yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily. You buy a card file box and dividers for months and days, thirty-one numbered index cards to cover every single day of the year. The tasks go on index cards, and you file them appropriately.

Each month you pull out the tasks and choose which day they’ll be done. Each week you move your weekly cards along. Every day of the week has multiple cards in it for things that must be accomplished and some optional cards that are fun things like Date Night or Family Movie Night. It’s all there, and every card gets re-filed when it’s done. You can even put your meal plan and recipes on index cards and insert them into the appropriate days. Check. Check. Check.

[…]

This weekend retreat is where I’m first introduced to Christian music, which is playing on the radio of my friend’s car. It’s where I am initiated into the world of Christian women’s ministry, Christian women’s roles in the home, Christian women’s purpose in the world, and Christian women’s authors—a possessive role that encircles a possessed audience. I never knew “Christian” was such an all-encompassing adjective, but it seems like an easy way to know what is true and what is not.

All my perfectionist boxes are checked that weekend, and a plan is in place. I know how I will run my household, and this magic box of cards will be my insurance against failure.²

1. Are women’s retreats still a thing? I don’t hear about them much anymore and my theory is that we all burned out on a good thing we took too far.

2. Spoiler: Friends, it was not any kind of insurance. I still failed.