How often do we fly through our day, making our way through the to-do list and rushing to get the kids to the next event they have committed to? We talk about wanting time, but how often do we intentionally make time to let life happen rather than allowing things to dictate our actions?
I know you're already thinking, if you only knew my life. It's a season of busy. While I understand that seasons of busy happen, I am also learning that those seasons last much longer than they should when we continue to just let life happen to us.
Do you know what I notice when I browse the "Christian" book section in any given book store? The current popular books for women all have a theme. They are instruction books on "Breaking Busy", giving "The Best Yes" and overall how to incorporate rest into our lives. Why is it so hard as women to actually limit what we do? Why do we need our children to be involved in multiple extra curricular activities simultaneously?
As mother's we often talk about impact in our children's lives, but do we ever stop to question the lessons we are teaching when we over book our own schedules beyond what we can humanly sustain?
Last year for the first time I created a mission statement for life over the next five years. Where do I want to be? What do I want life to look like? How do I make that picture happen?
My reality? I have been hearing God tell me over the last couple of years that he wants our family to live more intentionally. I have heard and tried to incorporate different things into our lives that will move us that direction, but the reality is that most of those things have managed to fall into place prior to last year without planning. It has kind of been dumb luck that we have managed to embrace parts of intentional living.
Last year, thanks to author and blogger Ruth Sokup, Living Well Spending Less, I discovered the concept of setting goals and breaking down life into smaller chunks of time. While as with most things when you first try them, there are parts I was not completely successful on completing in her suggested list of ways to accomplish goal setting, what I did find is that I met all 5 goals for the year by December 31, 2015! It's an amazing feeling when you can look over the year and see what you accomplished despite the varying challenges that we face over the course of a year.
So I met with success in goal setting last year. Setting goals should have been something I focused on prior to January 1, 2016, right? Nope, I was sooooo busy. There was always something else begging for attention so I spent the month of January operating in survival mode always putting off what I needed to do for what was in front of me demanding my attention.
This weekend as January came to an end, I took some time to pull out that 2016 goal setting workbook and filled out those little spaces that made me focus on what the rest of 2016 needs to look like. Do you know what I realized? When I take the time to calm myself, separate from the chaos and put some effort into planning, the life of our family begins to settle down. Rather than letting life happen to us, we begin to intentional decide what happens.
As a result of my taking the time to decide what needs to happen this year to move our family toward that goal I set for 5 years from now, we are moving forward with purpose. Once I put down on paper that I wanted to get our kitchen remodel done by a certain date, I began to realize if we break it down into small manageable projects, it moves toward a reality rather than just being something we "want" to do (and not even a week later 90% of the wallpaper that covered our kitchen floor to ceiling is down).
When I live today in survival mode, it effects my entire family. When I live today intentionally, with a plan, well, then the reality is our family has more time than we imagined possible. That wallpaper that came down in the kitchen since I set some goals, that has happened while my husband and I still take time to play crazy with our little girl nearly every night and manage the other household tasks along with school for me and work for him. Oh, and did I mention that we both are volunteer staff members at our church?
Life has moments it gets overwhelming. Whether we live in the overwhelming moments or pass through them is entirely up to us. If you have never tried goal setting before I encourage you to try it! It gives you a purpose, something you are moving toward. Set dates on those goals for the year. You'll find some of them you accomplish way before their due date and others need to flex to later dates in the year because life happens, but being able to look at where you have been at the end of the year is an amazing feeling.
Don't know where to start? Check out Living Well, Spending Less for a great starting point. She has a free Goal Setting Workbook via email that she offers when you sign up for her email. She has lots of other amazing resources on her site that she has made available as well.
When we live life running from commitment to commitment we are never giving the best part of ourselves to anything, including our families. When we chose to actually begin to be selective at what we say yes to, well then we are able to give the best of ourselves to multiple things, most of all our families. We give ourselves the ability to live in today rather than being overwhelmed by tomorrow and the things left to do from yesterday.
Choose to live in the today, this moment, with the people you are with right now. Choose to stop the crazy cycle of letting life happen to you and create intentional moments and memories today.
