It Will Be Worth It

 

Clearly a Pixabay picture. I would need more than two days to get to that leven of tidy.

My boys share a room and so do the girls. Over time, their rooms became more and more inaccessible, as every available floor space was covered in toys, papers and socks. They did the odd tidying session, picking up all Lego, or binning 25 things, but it made hardly any difference at all.

In the end, I decided to go Dutch on my kids. Not payment-wise, but cleaning-wise. Every Spring, women would Spring clean their pretty immaculate houses. My mum used to do this. I had forgotten, but my sister’s blog about Spring cleaning reminded me. So we started with the boys’ room. We took everything out of their room, except for the furniture and the books. A day and a half later and their room was immaculate and clean, and the boys were thrilled.

As we started the girls’ room, I overheard my nine-year-old tell his sisters, “Don’t worry, it will all be worth it in the end,” something I had told them when ploughing through Lego and Playmobil mountains the previous week. His sisters didn’t believe him any more than he had believed me. By then, I wasn’t even sure I believed him either!

I thought the same thing when someone asked me about publishing a book she had been working on. “Well, get an editor, and spend forever memorising the manuscript, as you will be editing each paragraph so many times, you’ll dream the words. Then get ISBNs. Yes, it’s a bit awkward, but it’s ok. Yes, a long process, but it will be worth it in the end.”

I even tell myself, when getting a manuscript covered in pen from my editor. I really don’t mind the taking-out bits. It’s where extra paragraphs are needed... Hopefully, it’ll be worth it in the end. Or when setting up a book table, knowing there’ll only be a handful of people coming along to the event.

I realised it’s easy to judge writing and tidying that way. Was a day and a half per room worth it? Maybe it would have been easier to simply bag up every single thing in sight, but we’d have lost four hundred socks and most of the Playmobil people would have to carry on their existence without hair. Seeing my kids’ happy faces in their sparkling rooms feels like the three days of exhaustion was worth it.

Someone told me once that they had moved on from Christianity, but reading Walled City made them wonder if they should return to God. People have said lovely things about my other books, and it definitely feels like it had been worth it. On the other hand, thinking about faith, the Gospel, serving God and all the other themes I have thought about when writing has been worth it in itself. It’s been a pleasure, a blessing and all along it has felt worthwhile, even when deleting most exclamation marks or changing Oxford commas. So there you are, some Thursday encouragement. If it feel like a tricky task, just remember, it’ll be worth it in the end! And be grateful you’re not sorting a shop’s worth of Lego.

Maressa Mortimer is Dutch but lives in the beautiful Cotswolds, England with her husband and four (adopted) children. Maressa is a homeschool mum as well as a pastor’s wife, so her writing has to be done in the evening when peace and quiet descend on the house once more. She loves writing Christian fiction, as it’s a great way to explore faith in daily life. Because of her interest in writing, Maressa is part of Creativity Matters: Find Your Passion For Writing, an anthology encouraging people to write.

Her debut novel, Sapphire Beach, was published in December 2019, and her first self published novel, Walled City, came out in December 2020, followed by Viking Ferry, a novella. Beyond the Hills is the second book in the Elabi Chronicles, and was released in 2021, followed by stand-alone novel Burrowed, released in 2022. All of Maressa’s books are available from her website, www.vicarioushome.com, Amazon or local bookshops.