Fighting the Devil with a Spatula
I started spiritual direction last year. Once a month, I sit in a coffee shop with someone wiser than me and we discuss my interior life (kind of a scary place1 if we’re honest—my interior life, not the coffee shop). The goal is to slowly incorporate patterns of prayer into my days (read: pray when I don’t feel like it [most of the time]). A few months ago, I brought up my household responsibilities. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a loaded, angsty topic. Generally speaking, I grade myself as a C- housekeeper. I make dinner most days and have used the vacuum in the last week, but the bathrooms are dusty and clutter and trash lurk in every dark and narrow space. Don’t check the pockets of the diaper bag. I often find myself stuck, unable to figure out the next logical step when it comes to keeping house. I don’t pick up the sock and toss it in the right laundry basket on my way down the hallway. I don’t cut up an onion in the morning so I have it ready at 4 p.m. And I don’t have any idea how the milk stains got there in the first place.
After I laid the situation out before my spiritual director, the question she suggested taking to prayer was: “What is keeping me from taking the small steps?”
As it turns out, reasons. Many. Here are a few:
I can’t take small steps because it has to be perfect. There are the perfectionists who can’t ever walk past the sock on the floor and the perfectionists who think, “If I pick up that sock, I have to clean up the whole room.” I’m the second kind. For a long time, I would have given a lot to be the first kind of perfectionist. But based on anecdotal evidence, I don’t think that first kind of perfectionism is any less disturbing to ye old internal peace.
I can’t take small steps because I don’t have time. No better way to talk yourself out of a small step than convincing yourself that there isn’t enough time—this piggy backs on to the perfectionism. Doing just one part of a five-step process isn’t good enough. This is no way to live if you’re ever going to be interrupted. That is, if you’re involved in any way in the lives of others at all.
I can’t take small steps because of the scary internal feedback. I’m an anxious person. If I look back, I see the signs—the ten-year-old who had so much trouble learning to ride a bike was the same eighteen-year-old who hated merging on to the highway was the same thirty-year-old who is afraid of her own kitchen cabinets. Taking small steps of new skills has always unleashed a deluge of internal feedback, the mildest of which is usually YOU ARE DOING THAT WRONG.
So, what small step could I take regarding small steps? Well, in my fancy new 2025 planner, the first resolution I wrote down was, “I will honor small steps.”
Then I realized how much I sounded like a yoga instructor. Honor? By doing what? I scratched that out and wrote, “I will thank myself for taking small steps.”
This is a trip. You should try it.
“Thank you for throwing away three eggshells.”
“Thank you for picking up the paper scrap off the floor.”
“Thank you for making the bed.”
I didn’t realize how little positive internal feedback I had going around upstairs until I really started making a point of it. The little spurts of gratitude kept surprising me. And, yes, this idea has already been through the complete washer-and-dryer cycle: at first I thought it was AMAZING, and then I thought it was stupid, and now I think it’s helpful. It’s a fun experiment, if nothing else.
It’s made me wonder about the source of the negative, anxious, ungrateful thoughts that this “thank you, thank you” mantra is helping to edge out. I don’t want to totally over spiritualize this, but some of those thoughts must come from Satan—or, as my three-year-old likes to say, “Sain-tan.”
“Sain-tan is the worst. I hate him.”
Me, too, kid. Many of the thoughts cycling around in your head are your own, but there are other forces at work. I think that Satan is absolutely trying to keep all of us from doing the next small step, and he wages that battle in the mind. The moment you take a nearby spatula to the sink to scrape off the egg residue, Satan is going to insinuate that you shouldn’t have moved away from that one house six years back or hold up a picture of what your firstborn will look like after they start rebelling. Why? Why does he do this? Because the small steps are important. They cause damage to his evil designs for us. Why would he expend so much energy trying to get us to avoid small steps if they didn’t?
On the Calendar: Baptism of Christ
🐂 Gospel for Sunday: Luke 1:15-17, 21-22. All three synoptic gospels record the baptism of Christ. It’s the start of His ministry, and it’s how we’re ushered into the 34 weeks of Ordinary Time. “You are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased.”
January 12: Baptism of Christ – We will celebrate this feast by busting out a bottle of sparkling cider and lighting up everyone’s baptism candles (the Advent candle holder comes in handy for this) and renouncing Sain-tan. Sparkling cider has come in handy for family baptism days (because I don’t have to bake it). So has printing out a renewal of baptismal promises and keeping it with all the bottles of sparkling cider. My goal this year is to find some other shelf-stable treat solution for Confirmation Saint days. Our first one comes up at the end of the month. Suggestions welcome.
After Sunday, we’ll return to Ordinary Time, which, for many of us, will be a relief. As one of my children’s godmothers once said to me, “I’m an Ordinary Time kind of gal.”
Saint Balthazar absolutely crushed it in last week’s favorite Wise Man Poll. He is now my favorite Wise Man, too. It’s Friday night at 10:25 p.m. over here (calm down, Mom, this IS what I do to relax) and I have very few ideas for a poll, so…
I am turning on paid subscriptions at the end of January.
I have (as of yet) NO PLANS for new paid-only content, but I will archive the 100 posts that were written before 2024. Paid subscriptions are gifts that give me the flexibility to spend more time cracking jokes, and any kind of subscription to my writing is a huge vote of confidence in me as a writer. I realized the other day (with no shortage of emotion) that this motley collection of essays is exactly what I would have dreamed of creating five years ago. I am so thankful for you, and I love it when you reach out (email, message, comment, lean over the pew after mass tomorrow) to tell me that what I wrote meant something to you.
If the monthly/ yearly thing isn’t in the cards, you could also…
Buy me a coffee.
My books: Eucharistic Saints, A Saint A Day
Not affiliate links or Amazon links. By all means, buy the books on Amazon, I just figure you know how to get there on your own. Sometimes TAN and Thomas Nelson run deals, though!
+ Saint Sessions for YDisciple (co-written with Tanner Kalina)
We partnered with January Jane for the inspiration for the content!
note — this rather ancient essay was written long before a dear friend named her third child. It is a beautiful name.
Oh man, that lack-of-executive-function-overwhelming-spaces-perfectionism-plus-working-full-time kills me at least twenty times a day and Satan absolutely uses it to crush my self confidence as a mother. I used to think I was the only one or all the other Catholic moms with 12 more kids than me were somehow filled with a grace I couldn’t reach.
"I think that Satan is absolutely trying to keep all of us from doing the next small step, and he wages that battle in the mind... Why? Why does he do this? Because the small steps are important. They cause damage to his evil designs for us. Why would he expend so much energy trying to get us to avoid small steps if they didn’t?"
This applies to housekeeping and SO MUCH in life. Friendship, marriage, vocation and work, spiritual disciplines, parenting etc etc etc...!!! Thanks, Meredith.