For the last week, Pete has decided that 530 am is a good time to get up. And he doesn’t wake up with a happy, take-on-the-world attitude. No, he wants the lights kept low, mommy to snuggle with him until he falls back asleep, and mommy to keep holding him while he finishes the rest of his night’s slumber.

Bill usually leaves for work at 530 am, so I’m generally already awake at this hour. Prior to Lent, 530 to 600 am had been email and computer time in a comparatively silent house. All “me” time. On Ash Wednesday, I turned that time over to spiritual reading. All “God” time.

Now it’s all “Pete” time. And I’m a bit unhappy about it. I want that “God” time back, because that “God” time was really, after all, “me” time. Quiet, uninterrupted time when I am relaxed and not in danger of falling asleep is very rare for me. At the end of the day, I will fall asleep or lose my concentration very readily. My mind is still going 100 mph, and I can think of a thousand tasks that should be done before I retire for the evening. In the middle of the day, there is constant background noise, interruptions from the doorbell or the phone, and the incessant demands of little children plus the fact that I have a job to do: school, housework, meal prep, laundry. It is only in the early morning before children awake, but after I’ve begun sipping coffee, that I feel my brain functions like an intelligent adult’s brain.

But isn’t Lent about surrender, after all? It’s not about “me” time, no matter how much I disguise it as “God” time. “God” time is all the time. “God” time is attending lovingly to my duties as a mother of needy, little children with a happy heart. This does not mean that I should neglect formal prayers, excuse myself from reading anything deeper than the church bulletin, or pretending that this daily drudgery is enough sacrifice and penance for me.

I really loathe the notion that a Catholic housewife need only to attend to her family’s needs with a cheery disposition offering this labor to God with mini-aspirations throughout the day and she can be assured of her own and her family’s salvation. Perhaps that is enough for some: don’t we all know those unblemished souls who think that some back talking their parents while they were a teen qualifies as a rebellious and sinful youth? Most of us though, I’ll wager, have a bit more atoning to do. And some of us have a LOT more atoning to do.

And so the challenge is not in finding quiet “me/God” time but rather in doing my best to focus in the midst of chaos. It is forcing myself to put off the load of laundry until later (I can sort, rotate and fold with half a brain in the evening hours) and sitting down right now when there is a relative lull. It is saying the rosary, perhaps for the second time that morning, while holding the drowsy child because there is no rule that says two rosaries in one day are a waste of time. It is including my children as much as possible in spiritual exercises with a “can’t beat ’em, join ’em” attitude (my kids love the Stations of the Cross).

AND it is attending to my duties with joy. Life, even my life, is not at all about me. It’s not about what I get out of it. It’s not about what kind of a person I make myself into. It’s about responding promptly, dutifully, and happily to the challenges God sets before me, including an early rising toddler.