Time!

Time has been just a common theme in my life these days. It keeps coming up in my thoughts and conversations and I really feel like I'm on the verge of understanding something.

Here's how it started: As I wrote earlier in the season, I like keeping things simple around Christmas. When i hear others say how busy they are, it makes me so glad that some of the choices I've made keep us from rushing around in December and we can really enjoy the holidays. But a week or so into it, I realized that I'm still not slowing down and relaxing. I'm spending all day just keeping up with house and family stuff and I'm constantly busy even though we have no extra actitivies! I found myself thinking that in the midst of trying to keep things simple so I could better worship Jesus this Christmas, I was managing to barely give him a thought.

I don't know how many times I have thought that I just need more time. There was a point awhile back (probably before Julia) that I remember thinking how it was a calm time in our lives and I didn't have much going on, but now I'm still not involved in a lot of extra stuff but many days I feel like I can barely keep up. How will I ever manage to homeschool or to take care of more children (if we ever do)? How will I keep up with running kids around to different activities plus dealing with all the same stuff I have to do now? How will I ever spend significant time serving others in a ministry outside our home, like I always picture myself doing one day? I don't know. But I'm learning that for one thing, I can't worry about the future. I need to focus on making life work right now.

As far as how to do that goes, little by little I'm figuring out a few things that help. My cleaning chart definitely helps, but I still struggle to keep the house looking nice. Monthly meal planning is going really well this month, so I think that's going to be a big stress reducer. I definitely need to spend more time in prayer and reading my Bible, which often takes a back seat on busy days, and I've found a few sites with some great sermons that have given me a great perspective on this, which I hope to take to heart. I think that doing a lot of my computer work after the kids (and sometimes Matt) goes to bed may be helpful so I'm not putting them off in favor of the computer screen during the day. (I'm doing this now as I make soup so I guess that's different.)

Something else that has helped me today was reading a little of a blog that Jeannie had a link too. It's called Passionate Homemaking. It has a lot of natural living kinds of stuff which I'm not totally into, but it has a lot of simple, honoring God kind of living stuff that is very relevant to what I've been thinking about. She definitely encourages priority being given to God above all and then serving husband and children, and then housework, and then serving outside the home. This is helpful in one way to me, but in another it just brings up a dilemma...In cooking, for example, she asks you to consider what your husband would want you to serve the family and not to spend so much time on healthy cooking that you are missing time with him. Well my husband puts a huge priority on healthy cooking, so how do I balance taking the time to serve what he wants and spending time with him? And he definitely values a clean home so if I neglect that so that I can have more time just hanging out with him, I will feel bad knowing that he would like the house cleaner. So I'm at a little bit of a mental block, but still praying and thinking about trying to make daily life go as smoothly as possible, all while spending plenty of time with and enjoying my family and growing in faith. Maybe the answer is to get up earlier! If Gray would just stop peeing in the bed so I could sleep all night...

Anyway, any ideas about any of this or helpful hints are appreciated!

And here's the link to the blog I mentioned: http://www.passionatehomemaking.com/2008/07/simplifying-our-priorities.html