Category: Helpfulness of Habit

Here we are.  November marches on and the holiday season approaches.

If you looked at my laundry room right now, you’d think that things are under control.  I’m all caught up; it’s washed, folded, put away and the house is relatively clean.  If you looked at my studio, you’d wonder what kind of explosion happened in there, and once I assured you there wasn’t one you’d recognize the mess as evidence of a woman whose mind is racing with too many ideas, too many plans, too many projects (along with a few invasions by a certain two year old I adore).  I know I should slow down, cross some of it off the list, and relax.  I can’t.  There is too much I want to do, too much I have to do, and too many special things upcoming for me not to work like a crazy woman in every spare minute I can find.  I do feel like I’m keeping it all in perspective, which is why the laundry is done.  I’m learning to squeeze things into tiny pinches of time without throwing off the family (or maybe I’m dreaming, and just wish I could learn that, but I really am trying).

Let’s see, how did the week go?

Well, in some ways it went really well.  I went from feeling deeply discouraged about my ability and potential in raising teenagers, and if I’m really humble I’ll admit to some discouragement about the ability and potential of the teenagers as well.  Seriously, where are their brains?  But that’s not worth discussing now, because if anybody knew the answer to that question I wouldn’t be asking.  Oh, how I wish I had some experience in this area!  I took a step back, prayed a lot, tried to do a better job of listening, tried to understand my role as a parent, and really sought to feel and communicate more love.  It helped.  It didn’t change the child, but it tempered my behavior, which is really all I can control, and I feel thankful.  I do feel like, although I’m still a rookie and don’t know anything, I’m growing as a mother.  I’m slowly getting better.  As for a soft reply, let’s just say that when a certain teenager slammed into a wall today and made an 8 inch strip of plaster fall off, I had nothing negative to say.   That wouldn’t have happened a few months ago.

In the same area, I tried to connect with my children this week and felt that I had some really good experiences with many of them.  I have one child who has really struggled with her homework.  She avoids it and often cries for more than an hour over her math homework.  This after being a math whiz last year!  I have prayerfully tried to help her and we had a small breakthrough this week.

Healthy eating.  I haven’t mentioned this for a few weeks because I haven’t made any progress and it’s been difficult to motivate myself to be super strict.  I have, however, kept the weight I lost off, and am slowly working my way to where I need to be.

Housekeeping.  These habits were among those that weighed heavily on me at the beginning of the year.  I have some areas that still need help, like the bathrooms, where I need to work out a better schedule for staying on top of them (like maybe clean them all every 30 minutes?) but in other areas I’ve really gained ground this year.  The children are much better at maintaining their bedrooms, the toy room is clean most nights, and while things can get torn apart in 15 minutes flat, I can put them back together pretty quickly too.  This weekend we cleaned out the van and organized the bike/toy/random everything area of the garage.  The basement was also addressed.  I’m working hard and it feels good.

Creativity.  I am so grateful for every opportunity to be creative, and feel blessed to have fit some of those moments into the week.  It really calms me down.

I was thinking this week that my record keeping has really fallen off this year.  While I’ve grown in my capacity to recognize the Lord’s hand in my life, I haven’t written those experienced down enough, and my miracle box is lacking many of  little details which would have been such a blessing to go back and read.  I feel a little sad about that and wish I’d done a better job of adding that layer to our lives.  I also haven’t written in the childrens’ journals for a while and I need to repent.  I’ve had to become more strict with myself about getting to bed at night so I can get us going in the mornings and I haven’t left room anywhere for that kind of record keeping.  I need to schedule time to capture all that I can still remember.

While we’re on the topic of poor performance, I haven’t been a very good friend.  In some ways I think I’m a great friend, but the stage I’m in is so intense from early morning until late at night without a pause that I’ve fallen out of the habit of fitting in time to nurture friendships.   It’s not something I ever thought would happen to me, and I certainly didn’t plan it, but here I am and it makes me feel so sad.  I want to work at being a better friend.

On Friday we raised the flag for Veteran’s Day in honor of my Grandpa who passed away in June.  It was really sweet to watch my children do it all themselves.  We miss him and hope he knows we love and remember him.

I got to see my sister this week, and we also got to see our brother and his wife who were in town from Spokane.  We all met at the new Crate and Barrel store that opened Friday in Utah.  Hooray for my favorite store!  And hooray for a mini reunion!  There were some things I would have loved to buy, but I was good and left them all there.

You know, life is crazy.  But it’s also wonderful.  I’m learning to smile more at both the good and bad.  I’m so grateful to be alive.

Jennifer

Here I am again, facing the beginning of a new week with mixed feelings.  I love this time of year.   In some areas our family slows down and in others my life seems to go on fast forward.   There is so much to do, so much to catch up on after fall sports slow down, so many things on my wish list of tasks to complete.  And yet it’s also a time of year that beckons me to slow down, snuggle under  a warm quilt and read a book.  Finding a healthy balance between the two can be tricky.

Was it really just Halloween last Monday?  Where did the week go?

I was good to my house this week.  A lot of little things finally got done and I like how much better things look and feel.  And here’s a newsflash:  I’m three loads away from being caught up on laundry!  Woo hoo!  I haven’t been this close to caught up in months.  The other amazing thing about it is that I’ve been really disciplined about getting everything folded and put away.

The down side is that when I get in a good housekeeping groove I always end up promising myself that when it’s completely clean then I’ll do such and such.  The thing is, I never quite get there.  It’s really never all clean at the same time.  I end up chasing the impossible when I should just accept “close” and take a few minutes to do other things that also matter to me.  Because I so easily fall into this trap I’ve had this growing tension, a desire to be creative.  It gets worse at this time of year when there are so many projects I want to finish both for the holidays and because I promised myself I’d do it this year.  I’m going to find a better balance this week.

Let’s see, the biggest surprise of the week came on Friday as I was driving home from the grocery store.  I had my window down an inch or two and was in the left turn lane of an intersection when suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my right leg.  I looked down at my lap and saw a wasp on my jeans.  I wanted to do three things simultaneously:  drive properly, kill the wasp, and cry because my leg hurt so bad.   But because my leg hurt I didn’t want to smash the wasp on my lap and risk another sting.  So I tried to brush it off and keep track of where it crawled to while I also kept my eye on the road and blinked back tears.  It was an interesting thing to think about on the way home, trying to decide what bothered me most:  the pain, knowing a wasp was crawling around inches away from me, and feeling annoyed with the construction worker that didn’t want to let me turn down my street.  Two days later I have a four inch round circle on my leg from the sting that has gone from being swollen and warm to the touch to what I think will be an ugly bruise.

The funniest discovery of the week came this afternoon when my seven year old daughter told all of us what she thought her older brother’s full first name was.  And it’s not his name.  It makes me laugh so hard to think that all these years she’s never once heard us call him that name and yet she was sure it was his name anyway.  Children are so funny!

I feel good about my efforts in the kitchen lately.  I’ve been focusing on more variety and more from scratch.  Yesterday we turned my kitchen into a bakery for my daughter and two friends to make cupcakes in.  I enjoyed teaching them some new things and they were adorable!

I also let most of the children spend more time with friends this weekend.  Not a big deal except that for me doing the whole friend thing is really stressful.  I don’t know why.  I just know that when my children have friends over I can’t relax, which means that all day Friday and Saturday I was battling major stress for 9-10 hours straight.  I’m consciously working on it in the hope that I’ll become a more relaxed mom when crowds are around.  On Friday night we had the soundtrack from Tangled blaring in the family room for hours as girls of many ages danced and sang at the top of their lungs.  It was incredibly loud, but also very cute.  And the timing was perfect:  our 14 year old son was away on a campout… in a snowstorm.  We made late night trips for Slurpees and last night I watched my husband take on three 14 and 15 year old boys in a wrestling match and pin them all in two or three minutes.  Sometimes it’s a healthy thing for Dads to dominate.

I feel good about the choices I made this week.  I feel good about the things I sacrificed for better things.  I feel good about the direction we’re moving in, even if we’re moving much more slowly than I’d like.   Slowly, slowly I’m getting the hang of this whole mother of 8 world I live in.  And I’m praying my children turn out to be much better than I am, in spite of me.

Have a great week!

Jennifer

Yesterday I had an experience that reminded me of the importance of doing what needs to be done.  It was a simple thing but it made an impression on me.  The weather really cooled off here this past week, and although I knew I needed to just get outside and plant my bulbs, I wimped out.  For some reason the change in temperature really seemed to affect me, and I couldn’t warm up, which killed my desire to do any yard work.  At last it was Saturday and I was without excuse.  The frost took my gorgeous dahlias from heavy with bloom to black and limp overnight.  So in spite of my desire to do other things, I went out yesterday in the chilly gray and got started.  After I’d been working for a while, the sun came out.  I noticed the warmth on my back first, followed by golden sunlight shining across the yard.  As I worked, I couldn’t help but think about life.  Sometimes we start things, because they need to be done, under circumstances that feel gray and cloudy.  And sometimes we start things and the clouds get worse.  Sometimes the ground we’re working is hard and other times the soil is soft and easy to work.  But sometimes, when we’re working hard because it’s the right thing to do, the sun comes out from behind the clouds to warm us and light the way ahead.

I felt grateful for the reminder.  If we keep at things, eventually the sun will shine.

It was a good week, a busy week.  Our last soccer game has been played.  Thousands of sunflower seeds have been soaked, dried and roasted (which also means my kitchen counters are, at last, clear again).  Halloween costumes have been worn and changed over and over again.  My family room has been vacuumed more times than I wish to count.  Considering how much laundry I did this week, I’m amazed at how much more there is to do.    Piano recital songs have been memorized and practiced, errands run, projects finished.  I’m behind on many things, ahead on a few things.

And suddenly I’m also dozing off as I type.  Tomorrow is a busy day (Halloween is for all moms) so I’m going to get some sleep and re-read this in the morning to see what else I need to add or fix.  {Sorry.  I’m really tired!}

Have a great week!
Jennifer