Day 9: Making Church a Priority

I love my church.  LOVE it.  I love the worship, the pastors (!!), the people, the sharing, the music, the learning, the message.  It’s become a very big part of our life and I can’t imagine what our life here would be like without it as an anchor. 

At the beginning, it was work to make sure we got there each Sunday.  We had a 2-year-old and a 2 month old; it would have been much easier to just stay home.  We didn’t know anyone.  We were a bit shy and apprehensive.   But we marched on because we knew we should.  We knew it would be good for us as a family in our walk.   We didn’t quite know how important it would become, and we certainly wouldn’t have guessed that our weekly attendance and everything else that stems from it, would be such a pivotal part of our lives.  

Over the years (9 to be exact) attending church has become habitual.  We love going.  It’s what we do.  It’s a part of our life. 

BOY are we glad we marched on in those early days. 

Reflection of Day 9: 

Being intentional about important things in my life makes it easier to continue being intentional about important things in my life.  

And that smart fish Dory comes to mind again:  “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…

This post has been linked to the 31 DAYS series.  You can start from the beginning here, and check out the other 31 Dayers here by visiting The Nester.

Time for Myself

I’m not good at finding it, but when I do, I always think:  Gee, I should do this more often.

Time for myself is so elusive.  I don’t really even mind it that much because my time is spent doing better things, important things.   This season of kids at home will be over before I know it and I don’t want any regrets over what I didn’t do with them, time I didn’t spend.  I don’t want to be a shussher.  I don’t want to always be ditching them for a little ‘me time.’  I want my kids to feel welcomed and loved and encouraged and included in our lives as a family.   That’s where my time is being spent.

I’m more than good with that.

But most days, by about 8:00 pm, my sleepiness starts to kick in.  At that point, I really just want to sit down but I know that when I do, it’s game over.  I won’t be getting off my butt again until the sun shows its face. 

Last night was David’s only evening without meetings.  He has a huge pile of responsibilities on his plate and is very good at taking it all in stride.  He got to tuck Eden into bed, then sat with the boys to watch Top Gear (a weekly ritual they’ve had for two or three years now).  I, thankfully, had supper finished long before meal time, which meant the kitchen was clean before we even ate our supper!  I LOVE when that happens.   I surveyed the tidiness and declared a rare bath time for myself

…with a glass of Cabernet

…and book I’ve had on my shelf for a couple of years now, The Kite Runner.

It was only a 45 minute break, and it did include at least 6 interruptions from my children.  But it was delicious to just sit and read.  I need more of that. 

Next time, I’ll use that lock that seems to be on the door some strange reason.

Still Here…

Summer is flying by and I’m holding on for the ride.   But I am still here.  Really, I am. 

I have been working very hard with my design business, whipping up ideas, juggling schedules and coordinating trades.  It’s a good thing I love it, because it sure does take up a good chunk of my time!  I’ve also been trying to sort through this “mountain-o-crap” in my house that has been neglected for far too long.  I’ve been sorting and purging with a desperate desire to just… rid myself of some of the stuff.  When I layer in my active children and our desire to keep homeschooling through the summer, you’ve got a recipe for crazy.   

I also lost my dear grandmother very recently, which had me running back to Ontario last week for some time with family.  When my emotions settle a bit, I’ll come back and write a little something about this remarkable woman who was just so special to me and those who knew her. 

In the meantime, please know that I am here and thinking about all of you.  I hope your summer is going well… that the homeschoolers among you are starting to wrap your heads around the coming year (I just ordered my curriculum today!), and that you are joyful and content. 

Love to you,

T.

Someday

Did you ever see ‘Knight and Day’ with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz?  It was cute, funny and highly unrealistic.  It just what I needed on the day I happened to see it.  But the best take-away from the movie was Tom’s definition of “someday:” 

“Someday. That’s a dangerous word. It’s really just a code for ‘never’.”

And it got me thinking. 

It’s a word I say a lot. 

It’s a word that doesn’t really play well in to my goal of total contentment and intentional living.   It means I’m longing for something else. 

I don’t want to be longing for something else.  I want to be living in the here and now, enjoying it all, living fully.

That is not to say, of course, that we shouldn’t have patience for some things.  I would like to go to Greece someday, but it’s just not in the budget right now so it will have to wait until it is.  I want more time to do things for myself, but I’m able to recognize what season of life I’m in and I know that someday my kids won’t need me quite as much.  Someday I will have time to do more things for me.  

But for many of the things in life, someday really should be today. 

I should be saying yes more often. 

Away I go now. 

I’m going to make some banana muffins with extra chocolate chips. 

Then I’m going to get out the paints and do a fun craft with the kids.  I prefer to save the paints for outside on the grass (so I can mow it off rather than clean it up because I’m lazy that way), but it’s raining again still.  No, no.  Today, we paint on the floor! 

I am embracing the NOW after all…  

This is me and my attempt to live with a little less “someday” and a lot more “today.”

 ___________________

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. 

It’s the life in your years. 

                                                                              ~Abraham Lincoln

Mulligan

January.  

A fresh first page in a brand new book.  

An opportunity to get a do-over.  

It’s silly, really, that we seem to think change happens best at this time of year, but I guess there is something comforting in the fact that so many people around the world are doing hard things right alongside you.  Maybe that’s the attraction; the support of others.

I look back at 2010 with fondness.  We had a wonderful year as a family, as homeschoolers, as Christians, as a church.  My word for last year, ‘contentment,’ was a true focus and my personal desire for it was largely fulfilled.  Joy was there as a sidebar, and was there a very good chunk of the time as well.  It took effort – some days more than others.  But it truly helped to keep those two words at the forefront of my mind as I worked and played through my year.  They really did make the tougher times more palatable.  And they made the easy times that much happier. 

I felt as though last year had me paying a bit more attention to the important things in life.  The priorities.  Clearly, this blog was not one of them, as I really struggled to keep up with it.  I was living life more than I was documenting it.  And I needed that. 

But how ’bout my fresh page? 

Well, I mapped out some Personal, Financial, Family-related, Home-related, Homeschool-related.  I broke them down into bite sized chunks and I am quite optimistic about the coming 12 months.  It’s going to be great.   

As for this blog?  Well, my youngest is now four (oh, the difference a year makes!), Christmas and a few other big things are behind me, and I feel as though I have somewhat more control over things this year.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll hang out here a bit more than I did in the past.  Finding time for my creativity is one of my personal goals, and writing is certainly one of my delights in life, so we’ll see how it goes.    I got that lovely email from the WordPress folks on New Years Day and was astounded by the number of readers that visited my 62 posts during the last 12 months.   I guess you think I have some interesting things to say, and that really makes me want to keep going. 

I should probably start with updating my lovely summer header.  It is wintertime, afterall.  I even skipped right over fall, even though I had taken so many beautiful shots with my amazing new camera.  Ah well, that’s what those fresh pages are for.  Right? 

I have been considering a “word” for this year as well.  I bounced around a bit, but one word kept rising back to the top every time my head tried to push it down.  It ties right in with my list of goals, which all require focus and … well, things to be scheduled.  It’s more a phrase than a word this year:   

Intentional Living. 

I am going to do things more purposefully.  I’m going to give more consideration to things before I do them, think more about what to say before I speak, think more about what to bring into the home, what to teach my children, how to spend my time, what to put on the table.  I thought about these things before, but now I hope to do them now with much more consideration than ever before. 

As part of this, I will attempt to see you around here more often.  In the meantime, my prayer for you is for the year ahead.  May it be filled with love, joy, contentment and intention for you and those you love.

Time Keeps on Slippin’, Slippin’, Slippin’…

I can’t believe how quickly time flies.  People say it all the time.  Heck, I say it all the time.  But it’s so true, and it seems to slip faster and faster with every passing year.  Already, we’re in August.   AUGUST, People! 

Crazy.

Our summer thus far has been amazing.   We had a couple weeks of intense humidity (like everyone else it seeems), but aside from that, the weather here in Nova Scotia has been gorgeous.   Warm days + cool nights = a perfect summer in my mind.

We’ve had lots of work-related projects, several home organization projects, some garden-expansion, some home decorating and craft projects (more on that later), a couple of amazing VBS programs, time for two of the kids at camp, some great days at the beach, some visitors from afar.  We have more visitors arriving tomorrow and again later in the season.   And more updates to our home are expected between now and late September and I’m very excited for those!  

This week, I’ve started planning for our 2010-11 homeschooling year.  I always get really excited at this stage of planning because I just find it so…  fantastic!   There is so much opportunity to learn and get excited about learning!  And there are so many amazing curriculums out there.  It’s fun for me, each year, to kick it up a notch for the new “grades.”  I use the term loosely.  It’s a number that is assigned on the basis of age to appease the broader community, but we don’t technically have ‘grades’.   They learn at the level they’re at, which really means that I’m teaching Grades primary to Grade 7 at any given time.   But based on their age, the boys will be starting Grade 5 and Grade 3.  

This year we’ll be starting some biology and history, things we’ve only thus far skimmed as the interest dictated by the kids.  But now we’re moving ahead full force.    I’m excited!

All this to say… I haven’t forgotten you!  I can see that I am still getting LOTS of people visiting each day even though I haven’t been posting regularly. 

I will try to pop back here more regularly.  I really will try. 

I’ve missed you.