Man Cave

 Do you have a man-cave?  Somewhere you retreat to, to be alone, away from the world.

In my family, there's 8 of us living under the same roof.  That's 3 nuclear families making up one big extended family.  Well, not so big actually.  just 8.  But that's still a lot.  And sometimes, it can get too much.  Too noisy, too chaotic, too hot (literally - because not all the areas has aircond).

But in this chaos, I am thankful that each nuclear family is blessed with our own room, with our own air-conditioning to boot.  I always remind the kiddo that even though he doesn't have his own room, he must be thankful for the fact that we DO have our own room, and a clean room that's so comfortable with our own comfy bed, good thick mattresses and pillows and most importantly, a nice cool air-cond.  And that my friend, is MY mancave.

Sometimes, I just retreat there after a whole day of work and when I do not have the energy to talk to anyone, including the kids, especially the youngest that needs help with her homework.  I just turn off and can be on my social media for hours.  Sometimes, I'd be on Netflix, but not that much, I somehow do not have the addiction to Netflix.  But when I'm hooked on a series, that's the end of the story.

We don't normally allow our kids to hide in their man-cave, a.k.a the room.  So they will almost always hang at the "study room", gaming (a.k.a shouting at online friends) or watching their movies etc. (rarely "studying").  And recently, I learn a new word from Noel - "mental man-cave".  Because the boys aren't allowed to cave in their room, they obey and will retreat to their "mental man-cave" even in the presence of chaos around them.

And that, I think is a very important skill I need to learn.  When things aren't going too well, when my emotions are hay-wired, when all I want to do is bolt... but I still need to function as a human being, I still need to cook and clean and be a mother / daughter, I need to learn to retreat to my mental man-cave, to have that peace in order to move on.

But most importantly, this mental man-cave shouldn't be filled with trash.  It needs to be filled with whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy (Phillippians 4:8), there are the things that should fill whatever man-cave that we are retreating to.  And this is a reminder to myself today.