What I SHOULD be doing...

Today I was going down the stairs and I saw my scriptures lying at the bottom of the stairs in a forgotten pile, where I'd put them last week after I hurried home from church, eager to feed the baby, get her down for a nap, and have a couple of minutes of silence. I didn't remember that I'd put them there. And the fleeting and brief thought crossed my mind, "yeah, I should read those."

The dreaded SHOULD. I hate the shoulds in life, and it seems that the older you get, and the more responsibility you take on, the more SHOULD's come along. Sometimes I get so tired of feeling guilty for all the things I SHOULD be doing.

*I should be reading my scriptures every night.
*I should remember to say my prayers every day.
*I should hold my baby longer before I put her down--I should be enjoying her more
*I should be calling so-and-so
*I should be getting those last Christmas presents
*I should be making dinner tonight instead of making my husband fend for himself--AGAIN.
*I should play with Afton longer
*I should be working on my scrapbook
*I should be trying to lose weight
*I should be trying harder to improve my lesson plans and raise test scores
*I should go to bed instead of stay on Facebook forever reading crap about people I haven't talked to in years

It goes on and on. And I guess that's good--I mean, imagine if you were a person WITHOUT shoulds? You'd never go to bed, never work, never improve yourself. You'd be like--well, like some of my junior high kids. I swear, some of those kids are TOTALLY lacking in shoulds. Like the boys the other day who HONESTLY believed their lives would be better if they didn't have to go to school. Seriously? Are you an idiot? Isn't there a SHOULD in there somewhere saying, "I should get an education" "I should make something of myself" "I should have some sort of purpose in life." But I digress.

Yes, I grow weary of the shoulds. Because I know I can't just throw them off and say, "I'm doing fine!" because then I would never improve. But guilt is so heavy sometimes. And I know that it's only going to get harder, as Trevor gets further into school and is gone more, and as the number of children in the house increase and the income DOESN'T, those shoulds are just gonna pile up until I'm totally smothered. I don't think you are ever free of shoulds, no matter what your age or situation in life. Though, sometimes it seems there are people in my life--people I don't know very well or intimately, who seem to be doing EVERYTHING right and have no shoulds at all. But I know they do. They MUST. Somewhere. Everyone has shoulds, right?

Still, I'm glad I have shoulds. If I didn't, my life would have no purpose or direction. Having shoulds means I know what's important, even if, at the moment, I'm not really doing it. Having shoulds means that I am assessing my life and making an analysis on how I'm doing. Some people have absolutely no ability to that. Well, it's 10:30...

*I should be going to bed.