I need a Personal Assistant

... preferably older than 5 months please. Anyone interested?

Yes I do, I just figured it out. Someone who can enable me to run in my strengths by taking care of tedious details like budgets, housework, and time management while I focus on taking care of people and making life interesting and meaningful all round. Anyone know where I can pick up one of these?

Someone who loves cooking, homemaking, organising and bustling about in an important and cheerful manner while everyone comes and goes. Who can make everyone feel important, is never grumpy, always positive speaking and doesn't wake up tired. Someone who loves to exercise and understands rugby (for Marcus, age 6), never complains, is always motivated and focused.

Can that person also be 'green-minded', educate us so we don't feel bad that we are killing the planet and each other with non-organic foodstuffs. Someone who will let me climb hills with my kids, comb the beaches for treasures, break all the conventional rules about bedtimes and meal times for kids, and look the other way as I spend a whole day stitching a piece for arts sake with no rhyme or reason.

Someone to be my cheerleader so I can cheer on my lot. Someone to remind me that I am doing a great job and inspire me to greater heights. To tell me that holding the baby so he can sleep for an hour is worthy of that hour, that the couch is an ok space to spend a day or three, that I am allowed occasionally to buy clothes for me and get my hair done and not feel guilty even though everybody else needs things too, always.

Hey, to be fair, Rich is definitely a lot of these things. He never complains (I mean ever!), he doesn't criticise (ever!), he does housework and cooking and a million other things that I don't even ask for. He has a real servant heart my man. He's cool about my art and crafts, about how I spend my time with the kids and the fact that our home looks like a home and not a museum. I would be devastated if he spoke to me like others do to their at-home partners. Not once has he ever complained (and yet I bet he has had plenty that he could criticise if that was his nature). he doesn't control my spending (although this may not always be a good idea) and he is happy when I am happy. He frets when I'm low. It bothers him now to see me like this.

Our combined weakness is the organisational things ... budgeting, organising events and time management. We puddle along, but that position is vacant if you are interested? Pay: none. Perks: a fantastic family. Hours: 24-7, vacation when we vacation.

It's very likely why we don't own our own home, we spent our twenties trying to figure out how to stay married and like ourselves, our thirties on how to raise kids and stay married, and the rest just blurred in the background. I know there are people out there who know right off the bat who they are and what they will do with their lives. We just kinda made it up as we went along and still do. I am so thankful to my parents who stood by us during these years and even still. To our friends who believed in us when we didn't even believe in ourselves.

This baby thing has me living day by day. And now with a sick big kid and my husband travelling away to work, a new church to integrate into and a lack of time/headspace to develop new art works, it's not hard to see why I can easily dissolve into a form of 'blankland'.

Still, I am in a good place to have nothing crowding me, nothing expected of me, nothing pressuring me and pushing me to conform. I love that part of now. It's peaceful to only have to answer to myself, Rich and my kids. My body is recovered in general and I am walking again. The Clever Crafting Project is going off.

Talk about yo-yo - random energy, fits and spurts of vision, long days of nothing but childcare, feeling tired but loving that baby when he smiles at me (it's so worth it, it really is), spiritual highs and lows.

Yeah right. I suppose I could obsess about my weaknesses, beat myself up for not being perfect or just carry right on doing the best I can each day, mistakes and weaknesses and all. If God wants to send me an answer to a prayer I don't even know how to utter, then that would be great. Perhaps a secret angel, or an answer through some kind Samaritan. Come on you mum's out there. Let me know how you do everything and not fall apart. I am keeping it simple so I don't get grumpy at my family but if there is a way to get more in there, I'm all ears.

In the meantime, I am going to be holding this little guy close to my heart and practicing patience and goodness and gentleness and kindness and love and joy and self control to my bestest ability.