If I were to describe a person who “keeps herself well,” I might mention her figure, her clothing or her hair, how she remembers to wear earrings and makeup or how she smiles at appropriate times. I might say this with a twinge of jealousy, as if I am talking about someone who has something I want.  

So, imagine my surprise when Daniel and I had our second-ever couples massage in Asheville last weekend. Cornelius, the older Dutch gentlemen, had been at work on my shoulders for about thirty seconds when he said, “I can tell you’ve taken time for yoga or some stretching.” I acknowledged that I had, for more than 10 years, though not as often as I’d like. “You have kept yourself well,” he said.

After the massage, he remarked that he rarely encounters a client who is so “consistently relaxed.”

Am I bragging? Hardly. Astounded? For sure.

Words I might use to describe myself: passionate, structured, abrasive, contemplative (read: anxious), and, at once, driven and lazy. Notice I did not, nor would I ever say, “laid back” or “relaxed.” So this reading—based soley on physical evidence—shocked me, and I have reveled in and pondered it since.

“If you have figured out how to do that, why haven’t you told me?” Daniel asked.

I am a vocal proponent of caring for oneself,  but that doesn’t mean I’m good at it. For mothers especially, working or home, self-care can be complicated and difficult. It can seem counterintuitive: To be a better wife and mother, I need not always focus on caring for my children or my spouse;  sometimes I need to turn my focus on myself. For some, that just doesn’t compute. I have often lamented the Herculean efforts it sometimes takes to work out the logistics. And though I have been trying this year to do a better job nurturing my mind and soul as well as my body, I fail more than I succeed.

But the proof is in my apparently relaxed muscles, I suppose.  Here’s what Cornelius gave me along with that compliment: He affirmed that what I am doing now is enough.  I don’t need to wait until the kids are older or there is more time or I have more resources to turn my attention more fully toward my own wellness. He told me that my efforts today matter, despite my feeling that they mostly don’t.  

I wrote this in the “relaxing” environment of my cluttered sunroom, ignoring a sink full of dirty dishes and a basket of laundry on my couch, with shoes and jackets cast haphazardly by my front door, in my sweaty workout clothes. Because my daughters were at school and my son was sleeping. Because I knew there would be time to do dishes and fold laundry and collect shoes and jackets (however inefficiently), when he woke up.

Because keeping myself well on this particular day meant taking my daughter on a nature walk to preschool and walking with the baby after that.  It meant putting the baby down and making myself a fresh cup of coffee and an omelet that required chopping vegetables  (thus adding to my dirty dish pile), and eating it by an open window.

This does not come naturally. I’m the one in my circle of friends who introduced the idea of doing things to help your future self. Would future Christina want to wake up to lunches to pack or a kitchen to clean? Do it now, for future you, I’d advise. These words echo in my head daily. But not this day. None of these activities shortened my to-do list. But I can’t wait until everything is done to relax, because everything is never done. Sometimes future me needs to back off.

Maybe time isn’t a luxury you have. Sometimes I lament the luxuries I no longer have, like words of affirmation, or cute shoes, or conversations with adults. Maybe you don’t have a spare dime to spend on yourself. Don’t let those things distract you. This isn’t a thing you do because it’s convenient or it makes sense.

A couple days ago I read an article by a writer whose words have inspired me before, but this time her words chafed. She wrote about a (funny) and irritating situation with her child and how it used to make her long for “Mommy Time.” But how, upon hearing about a family who lost four precious children, she doesn’t need Mommy Time anymore. She just needs an eternal perspective. And Jesus.

The first time I tried to read it, I closed it before I got to the end. Because you know what I’m pretty sick of? Being told how I should feel, how I should spend my time, what I shouldn’t eat and how I should parent. But I’m also a writer, who jots down my thoughts on all the same things, and maybe others see my words as similarly bossy. I don’t know.

I do know I’m tired of the open letters. Tired of headlines that start: “Dear Mom Who…” or, “To the person at the grocery store who…” I’m over it. I’m tired of reading letters from strangers to other strangers telling them the way they order their days is wrong.

But whenever something annoys me to the level that this post did, I figure there must be something to it. I mulled it over all day. Wednesday was a freak, 70-degree day here in Coastal Virginia; it was a one day break before another winter storm threatened slush and ice. My two littlest and I had lunch with a friend, ignoring the housework that tried to demand my attention. We stayed later than we should have so my eldest daughter could play at the park after school, and when we arrived home the girls put on their rain boots to hunt for the “treasure” they had buried in the snow the week prior. I stayed inside, scrambling to feed the baby and cook dinner.

It wasn’t ten minutes before Emerie, my five-year-old, came in breathlessly relaying an emergency. “My sister is stuck in her rain boots in the mud,” she announced. I left the beginnings of a sauce on the stove and the baby strapped in his highchair to investigate. This is what I saw.

As I considered how to dislodge the boots (and chuckled), my next-door neighbor made her way over to me. My neighbor is battling cancer—she will always be battling cancer—and her road, at this time, is anything but steady or certain. 

“I have something for you,” she called; “I saw it and I thought of you.” Meanwhile I struggled to get the boots loose, accidentally breaking one of them. My girls appeared at the front door, flinging it open wide and emerging with bare feet to “help,” all the while abandoning their brother in his chair and letting our excitable dog escape. The dog greeted our neighbor, with whom I was still trying to have some semblance of a conversation, and then ran on down the street. I called to the girls to get back in the house, excused myself from the neighbor, and ran to catch the dog. When I returned with him, and to my barefoot children, who were still chatting with our neighbor, she handed me this little towel:

And my heart caught in my throat. I struggled through this chaos—my husband home late from work, again, dinner burning on the stove, the baby throwing food off his highchair, boots stuck in six inches of mud, children too excited to listen, makeup smeared on my face, hair escaping its ponytail, and my dog running down the street—but in that moment I knew what she was telling me. This is it, right here. This is life. This is beauty. This matters. Don’t wish it away.

I accepted the gift and thanked her; I told her how (clearly) perfect it fit this time for me. I ushered my children inside and told her I wish I could have spent more time.

I thought back to that article. I know it was nothing if not well meaning. Maybe her experience really did change her; maybe she really doesn’t need time to herself now that she has an eternal perspective. I say good for her, and I mean it. Supporting our neighbors in this struggle over the past six months and walking with our friends whose eight-year-old has courageously fought a similar fight, it’s shifted something in me somehow.

But it hasn’t changed my need to be an individual. God blessed me with these beautiful children. He created me to be their mother. I am beyond grateful that he chose me to raise them, and I am awestruck part of every day. But he also made me to be a wife, a writer, a sister, a friend, and yes, yes, yes, before all of that: a child of God, an individual with interests and hopes and fears and dreams, not all of which were meant to either be fulfilled by my children or repressed.

So here I sit at 6:15 a.m., drinking coffee and frantically writing before my youngest calls me. This is my time. And I will continue to need it, along with phone calls from girlfriends and dates with my husband and long walks with just my music and time alone. And it’s not because I don’t have an eternal perspective, and it’s not because I don’t love my children, and it’s not because I don’t love Jesus enough. It’s because I know who I am enough to know what I need, and I know that asking for what I need doesn’t make me weak any more than denying I need it makes me strong.

So here's the ironic part where I tell you what to do: Don’t be afraid to know what you need and to make space for it. It will make you better in every part of your life. Don’t let anyone—however well meaning—tell you otherwise.