Today I vacuumed my entire house. May not sound like much to you, but for me it is a feeling similar to that of, I don’t know, reaching the submit of Everest. Ok, so maybe not that great, but at least equivalent to carrying all of your groceries inside the house in one trip, or having all of the laundry washed, folded and put away in the same day. Yeah, it was a big time feeling of elation. I would love to say that I did this because I am a good homemaker. That I did this because I have pride in our home and want it to be clean and welcoming. The real reason behind the vacuuming marathon of all three levels of the house, tile, carpet, stairs, you name it, was the white noise drowning out my children’s arguing. Once I began and realized I could no longer hear their debates and power struggles, the vacuum became my new spirit animal. All these years I have wasted trying to be the voice of reason when I could have hide behind the constant hum of this powerful machine and had a much less stressful and much cleaner house.

Like a sock from the pile, I am at a point where reinventing my purpose is poignant. For years my socks has been right where they needed to be. All tidy in the drawer. All bound together, some plain and some spunky, ready for whatever occasion may present itself. Each purpose a pair I could easily grab and wear without ever giving much thought.. As if my “many hats” were socks, I adorned on autopilot, neither one of us expecting much of the other.

And just like that, it is over, and only beginning at the same time. The campaigning for the White House has ended, but a new campaign is begging for our attention. A mission we must pursue with more passion than any candidates who came before us. We must dig deep and decide that we stand for something greater.

Tomorrow my oldest child will be eleven. I literally can not fathom the fact that I have been a parent for over a decade. It is true what they say about time. How it has the ability to move so fast and so very slow all at once. It has been 4,015 days and I still haven’t figured out what I am doing.