RealLife: Our perspective is wrong

I warned a friend the other day to keep her expectations low when she and her husband visit next week. Our house is in terrible disorder, both because of our upcoming move and because of the reasons behind that move. She, being very understanding, assured me that she would be more worried about my well-being if things were orderly than if they were as obviously chaotic as in fact they are. Her expectations for me were reasonable; mine for myself are perpetually self-defeating.
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It was a perspective changer for me when I realized that the much-admired Proverbs 31 wife had servants to work with her. She worked very, very hard, but she didn't work alone. In our society we have forgotten the value of community. We expect too much when we place the burdens of life on individuals and hold up models for those individuals to emulate without giving them the same resources that the models had at their disposal. We expect too much of ourselves when we try to be as perfect as our models without conceding that we need the same supports those models depended upon. The Biblical model wife may have had food and clothing in abundance for her household with plenty to spare to sell and turn a nice profit, yet she did not grow the flax herself and transform it all into clothing by herself and sell it herself to others and cook, clean, and entertain friends. She had a household including multiple servants. As hard as she worked, a good portion of what she did was delegating tasks (which she received credit for) to others. Nor were the clothes she provided for her household so numerous: she probably had as many for the entire household as we expect a modern wife to provide for each individual in her care.
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Our perspective is human and wrong. We need to take on the perspective of Christ. According to His standards for me, am I accomplishing in my life and home what I should be accomplishing? Well, actually, no. I am imperfectly human and perpetually falling short of His call for me. I am perpetually striving for a level of perfection which I will never actually achieve, yet the striving itself is fulfilling God's will for me. So I choose to be content. Not because my home is as clean as I would wish it or my responses to frustrations as gentle as I know the Lord would wish it. But because I am standing up again, striving again, falling again, and looking at life again with the question "What do You want of me right now, Lord?"
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RealLife: I let my toddler pull out all the orange peels from a mason jar because I hadn't yet poured white vinegar on them and the mess she was making was more acceptable to me than the mess she would have been making by playing with the wet dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.
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RealLife: Our monthly science packet for December arrived yesterday. We have not yet opened the packets for November or October, nor actually finished the packet for September. My current goal for this aspect of our official science curriculum: to finish at least 2 of the packets before the February packet arrives. Or at least before March's arrives...
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RealLife: It would be easier to completely paint our new house before we move in, but the wallpaper removal, cleaning, taping, priming, painting, cleanup, etc. required to do so in the midst of a very full life means that such a requirement would push back our moving date for another 2 months or so. Or pay far more than we can afford to have the whole house done professionally. I choose instead to leave up the wallpaper in 3 or 4 rooms and to move before the painting we are doing now is completed.
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RealLife: If I had a smartphone yet with the ease of quick photo taking and uploading then maybe I would be brave enough to post a photo of the toys covering the kitchen floor. Why so many toys there? It kept the baby content an extra 10 minutes so I could finish chopping vegetables. Actually, it took me 20 minutes to finish chopping, but he was content with the toys for half that time. I didn't have time afterward to pick the toys up (he was no longer content...) so they stayed there overnight. But in my RealLife other priorities have superseded the smartphone and it's too many extra steps to take the picture, plug the camera into my computer, upload, and transfer it over here, so I am posting this without any photos.