SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

"God does not coerce us to follow Him. He invites us... He tells us what to do, and we find our happiness in doing it. We will not find it anywhere else. We will not find it by doing only what we want to do and not doing what we don't want to do. That is the popular idea of what freedom is, but it does not work. Freedom lies in keeping the rules" (1).

I was pondering this whole concept of self-care yesterday on my solitary evening walk. Pondering it because there was a more-than-slight twinge of guilt about my own self-caring attitude.
Just that afternoon, my husband and I had been talking about our plans for the week and I was quick to clarify that my evening walk was important and had to be fit in, that I needed it, that it mattered just as much as his morning bike ride. Well, does it? Is it important, should it be fit in, do I need it, does it matter? Read the rest of this entry »

Protect yourself and your husband from the subtle ways of infidelity.

This article was written by my sister, Mileah Hodge. She has walked through fires and come out shining like gold, with humbleness and wisdom to build a strong marriage.

Yellow light means CAUTION

Caution lights usually mean SLOW down and assess the situation as you approach. God has given us built-in caution sensors. We know when something is wrong. We can be blowing through life at 70 miles per hour but when we sense the caution light, we slow down. It is our God-given nature and duty to protect our home. Read the rest of this entry »

I was reading a book about how to organize your house (because although I'm not organized, I enjoy reading about how I could be if I bought a label maker, got rid of 50% of our possessions, and didn't have children, or had children who were more like robots...)and I came across this little list. I liked it, at first. Here. Read it. You'll probably like it too.

Common Practices of Good Housekeepers

1. Find a happy medium where everybody is comfortable.
2. Pick things up as you go.
3. Avoid putting things down temporarily.
4. "A place for everything and everything in its place."
5. Mental list of small jobs to do in a few minutes.
6. Stay busy; don't allow things to get ahead of you.
7. Believe it is important to live in a peaceful, uncluttered environment.
8. Love, need, and use everything in your home.
9. Buy fewer, but higher quality, things.
10. Do it now or don't do it.
( Ellen Sandbeck, Organic Housekeeping)

"A Happy Medium"

Then I started thinking about rule practice #1: "Find a happy medium where everybody is comfortable."

Allow me to describe the everybody and how they are comfortable.

1. The husband. Packrat, visionary, creative, tends to accumulate tools (large) and projects. Swings between a perfectionist attention to detail (due to German ancestry) and a spontaneous, committed-to-the-moment unawareness of the mounds of mess accumulating as a result of "the moment." I have a feeling that my lack of organization bothers him but he's too sweet to complain.
2. The daughter, 3 1/2. Nothing makes her happier than cutting one big piece of paper into a thousand tiny pieces of paper, or rolling one big lump of play-dough into a thousand tiny lumps of play-dough.
3. The son, 2. The more trains, the better. The more trucks, the better. The more cars, the better. The more tractors, the better. The more blocks, the better. The more tools, the better. The more floor space covered by aforementioned trains, trucks, cars, tractors, blocks, and tools, the better.
4. The baby, 9 months. His motto: "It's not really a meal unless there's as much on the floor and as much on your face as there is in your belly."

So I'm just going to admit here and now that when it comes to a happy medium, the only person whose comfort concerns me is ME. Is that wrong? Selfish? Short-sighted? Unfair?

Nah. Because there's one common practice missing from that list. It's not a practice so much as a truth. My Daddy used to say this, and he's a wise man. My husband says this, and he is also a wise man.

#11: If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

Furthermore, I think we should all agree that #11 trumps all the other 10 rules practices.

The End.

Image courtesy of D Sharon Pruitt.

1. Learn that God wants you to succeed.

Journal entry, 18 October 2007:
I keep thinking of that verse in Psalms: "The Lord takes pleasure in the prosperity of His servant." I guess for some reason I've thought You preferred me to fail, or, at the most, to be mediocre. I saw failure as some kind of test or character-building experience, and though there's certain truth there, I no longer think You're the one instigating the failure. I am. You're the one saying, "Come on, try again, you can do it." You're the one hoping this time I have enough character to get past that failure point. You're the one who takes pleasure in the prosperity of Your servant. Somehow I felt almost obligated to fail before now. Was I sabotaging myself? I guess somehow along the way, I picked up this idea that the passionate pursuit of a goal is an insult to You, a sin, idolatry. Strange, and not true. Col. 3:23: "And whatsoever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men..."

~ What good is it for God if I fail? What does he gain from my failure?

2. Learn that you can't succeed at everything all at once.

If your vision of success is perfection in every area of your life, you're in trouble. First, perfection isn't success. Secondly, success in particular areas may require some letting go in others. I'm after success as a mother to three young children right now; that means I'm not going to hit "success" in having a fantastically clean house most of the time, or in keeping stains out of my shirts, or in going to hear more local bands, or in staying up past, say, 9:30 with any mental capability.

You have to choose what you're going to focus on right now, pick your goal, and be okay with letting some other things slide by on a minimum for a while. Set your level of acceptability for the routines of life, for the areas you're not focused on, and then get yourself on auto-pilot in those areas so you can focus on the one or two or three things you are striving for.

3. Learn to define what you mean by success.

You can't reach a goal if you don't know what the goal is. And though there's something to be said for setting high goals, shooting for the moon, blah-di-blah-di-blah, there's also much wisdom in defining success as something real, measurable, and reachable.

My mother-in-law (a very wise woman) and I were talking about this the other day. She's very strong at setting big goals and then breaking them down into smaller, reachable goals. It's success in stages.

Both my husband and I tend to set big goals. He's a very big-picture person, a visionary. It took me a while to realize that I am, too. My big-pictures still tend to be smaller than his, so in comparison I thought I was setting goals that were pretty realistic. (Yet another reason why comparison is not a helpful tool.) Whatever the scale, if your success isn't defined in a goal you can understand, measure, and realistically see yourself achieving, then you've just guaranteed your own failure.

So aim big. But break the big aim down into smaller pieces, then break it down again, and then focus on one of those pieces at a time. Success breeds success! Once you get rolling, you'll be unstoppable.

4. Wait and percolate.

Journal entry, 04 November 2007:
I don't know why, in all these areas like fixing up the basement and starting a business and gaining financial freedom, we have these times of lag. I think things are happening, preparatory, unseen things, and we have to hold on, wait, be diligent, trust, keep working in the meantime. Right now I'm feeling a sense of excitement, anticipation, hope, as if we are quickly reaching the point of progress and change. Situations seem impossible to overcome to me, but they aren't. Circumstances change in what seems like an instant but it's really a matter of long, slow, hard, faithful, small effort. "Suddenly" the wall falls down. "Suddenly" the business pours in. "Suddenly" to us because we don't look beneath the surface; we miss the depth of preparation taking place even within us.

5. Plan for the obstacles.

The world is full of obstacles. The only way to avoid them is to have no aim, to simply flow where you are pushed. You know people like this. We call them victims. They are needy, hurting, unfulfilled, whiney people. We should pity them, but we should not become them.
The world is full of obstacles. We spend too much time avoiding them. Challenges make us alive. Challenges open our eyes to what we can actually handle.
"Anytime you set a significant or meaningful goal for yourself, you'll have a feeling of inadequacy. That's part of the process of living instead of merely existing..." ( Treat, 23-4).

6. Make a Yes list and a No list.

Spend some time studying yourself and you will start to see patterns. When do you get cranky and depressed? For me, it's almost always a result of fatigue. I'm not saying I'm an eternally happy, peppy person. I'm not. I have normal ups and downs and off days and so on. But when I get that horrible sinking feeling, when I can't get myself excited about the things I love to do, when I want to cry for no apparent reason, the real reason is usually very simple. So simple I almost miss it: I need rest. Usually a good night's sleep does more for me than anything else. So here's something on my No List: don't try to have deep, heart-to-heart, burden-sharing conversations with my husband when I'm at that point at the end of the day. Every time I have broken my own rule, I have regretted it. I'm too spent to have a profitable conversation. It just ends up with wailing and gnashing of teeth.
A few more examples, from my NO list: I don't babysit on the weekends (now that my husband's day off is Saturday, I keep that time sacred for our family). I don't answer the phone during work hours (housework or writing work). I don't let myself feel guilty when Joe offers to keep the kids so I can go to the grocery store alone. I don't plan so much (I tend to overplan and then overwhelm myself; it's better if I just start doing and take time to plan as I go).

From my YES list: I make myself say YES when someone asks if I need help (because my auto-response is No and that's usually not accurate; I do need help). I get up early to read my Bible, plan the day, write in my journal because my day goes a thousand times better when I do this. I try to read aloud with the kids every day, even if it is just for five minutes. I stick to a naptime regimen: our schedule and routine stay the same as much as possible.

Those are kind of general examples. The idea is, though, whether it's to help yourself in reaching a specific goal or just to help yourself overcome some common problems, to think about what helps and what hurts. Then give yourself some rules and live by them for a few weeks. See if it makes a difference. Different seasons and different goals will call for changes to your Yes and No lists. Get your husband's input if you're clueless. He can probably point out some things you do out of obligation, guilt, tradition, or whatnot that you could pop onto your No list and free yourself (and your family) from.

Go for it.

Image courtesy of craigCloutier on Flickr.

I've talked about having house rules before; having a short list of them helps us Moms to maintain consistency because it gives us a concrete standard. But let's look at it just a bit more, because just sticking some arbitrary rules on the wall isn't really the goal.

Listen to what Charlotte Mason says:

"When a mother allows a little trespass to go, unchecked and unmarked, the child has learned to believe that he has nothing to overcome but his mother's disinclination; if she choose to let him do this and that, there is no reason why she should not; he can make her choose... and if his mother does what she chooses, of course he will do what he chooses, if he can; and henceforward the child's life becomes an endless struggle to get his own way.

Let the child perceive that his parents are law-compelled as well as he, that they simply cannot allow him to do the things which have been forbidden, and he submits with the sweet meekness which belongs to his age."

{Charlotte Mason, Home Education, pp. 14-15}

We all live under the law.

I'm not talking about the speed limit, though that kind of law matters, too. I'm talking about the big, divine, universal laws: the laws we know inherently, though some of us choose to ignore them and at times, we all fail to uphold them. Think in terms of the Ten Commandments, or, better yet, what Jesus said about the law:

"And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' No other commandment is greater than these.

{Mark 12:30-31)

We parents are to live under the law, and we need to teach our children that the rules we have are not just random ideas we come up with and then impose upon them arbitrarily. Sure, some rules may be: "No shoes in the house" doesn't have much of a moral implication. But the rules that really matter do have a moral implication.

Do a little digging and find the principles behind the rules, and teach them to your children. I've made a simple change when I discipline our children. Instead of saying, "No, Robbie, don't hit your sister," I say, "No, Robbie, I can't let you hit your sister. It is not right."

Does that matter? Maybe not all the time. But in the end, yes: because we want our children to grow up learning principles that give them wisdom for life, not legalistic rules, we need to help them to understand that law is universal and that we, their parents, answer to a higher authority. Everybody has to obey.

The amazing erupting Mommy volcano...

Being consistent with children is one of the most difficult parts of parenting. We're tired, we're distracted, the bad behavior doesn't seem like a big deal right now. We wait until it becomes a big deal and then we erupt. We train our kids to mess with the Mommy-volcano, to push until more steam comes out the top, and then to beat it for the hills when the lava starts spewing.

Isn't that a great picture of happy home life?

Consistency Is Key

Consistency makes everybody happier. Even if consistency means more discipline for the kids, and it usually does, kids are more secure, more at ease, and more content when they know that the boundaries exist and that they stay in the same place, all the time, no matter what.

And mommies are happier, too. When we have a plan, when we make decisions, and when we stick to what we've said, there is peace. We feel calm and we deal with things in a calm manner. This is far better than letting ourselves build up frustration by not dealing with the problems, then overreacting. You know it's true... We've all done it and we've all regretted it.

Why We Let Things Slide

The tricky part is the day in, day out of being consistent. Life doesn't stand still. It's easy to let things slide because there is other stuff to take care of at the moment. It's also easy to overlook misbehavior or disobedience because it doesn't seem like a big deal. We get tired of being the bad guy. We're the ones home all the time with the little ones and sometimes it's just nicer (we think) to let it go for the moment, or the morning, or the whole day. Daddy can deal with it all when he gets home.

Rules of the House

Here's the answer: house rules. Sit down with your husband and talk about what matters most in your home and with your children. Don't make a long list; five items is plenty to deal with on any given day. What behaviors are driving you crazy? What do your children most need training in? What issue tempts you to be inconsistent most often?

Your house rules will need to be age appropriate, of course. Make them simple, declarative statements, either stating the facts - "We don't hit each other" - or making a direct command - "No hitting." They can be general - "Share with each other" or more specific - "No arguing over which color cup to use at dinner time."

Once you make the rules, decide on an appropriate consequence for each rule if it is broken. There could be the same consequence for every rule or a specific consequence for each one. It depends on your parenting style, your kids, and what your rules are.

Make Yourself Accountable

Now the final and most important step: make a sign, a list, a poster board, a print-out, something with the list of rules and the list of consequences. You could include rewards, too, for a day of "no rule breaking." Everybody loves positive reinforcement and then you get to be the good guy!

Hang that list of rules in an obvious place. Go over it with your children. The younger the children, the more often you need to go over it. For teenagers, once is enough. More will come across as nagging.

Once it's up, you have to live it. Failure to be consistent will be obvious and embarrassing for you, and will deteriorate your authority so don't risk it. Stick to your guns. Even if you let other things slide, the things that aren't on the list, be consistent without exception when it comes to the house rules. You'll find that as you're consistent on those few items, the other misbehaviors will diminish. Consistency in one area has a way of effecting all areas.

It's up to you how long you stick to this particular list. You can add rules as needed or make up an entirely new list every week or every month so that you can work on different areas. The whole time you are using this list to train your kids, you are training yourself to be consistent. And that makes life easier and home a lot more peaceful and a lot more fun. Beats a volcano eruption any day.

Images courtesy of z2amiller and CJ Sorg and roland.

I Can Do Anything for a Month... Maybe.

I am a little obsessed with personal growth, life improvement, all things moving me toward being a better person and living a better life. I've only got maybe 80 years here on earth, and I would like to make the most of it. The trouble is that it's just difficult becoming a better person. I've got lots of habits that are hard to kick. Nothing really terrible or criminal or any worse than the next guy, but lots of things that keep me at a mediocre level in many areas of my life.

I have discovered that I can get momentum up for a while but then I just wimp out.

I need to build up more self-discipline. It is a long, slow process, but I am determined to keep trying and keep pushing because I am simply not satisfied with mediocrity. So. I read about this idea of a monthly challenge, and I think it is worth trying.

The concept is simple: try something for a month.

There are two basic kinds of monthly challenges, same concept but slightly different vision. The first promotes a habit. The 30-Day Challenge at Steve Pavlina's site is a good example. This type of monthly challenge gets you to put forward enough energy for the 30 days you've committed to. You trick yourself - "it's only for 30 days" - but after those 30 days it has become a habit and you can continue it, if so desired, with much less effort.

The second kind of monthly challenge promotes a project

. NaNoWriMo is, perhaps, the best-known of these challenges. The point is to put forward as much energy as possible to complete a (large) project in 30 days. The goal is completion, not perfection. You can let other things slide a bit in order to complete the project; you can always go back and work on the details later. The month of intense effort gets you through the project without a chance to lose momentum.

The monthly challenge possibilities are endless.

Whatever habit you need to establish or break is fair game. (It is easier to make a new habit than break an old one, though, so I suggest teaching yourself a new habit that will usurp the old one rather than focusing on not doing something anymore.) Monthly challenges work well because they give us a light at the end of the self-disciplined tunnel. You can endure almost anything for a certain amount of time. Telling yourself "it's only for 30 days, and then I can quit," helps you to keep moving forward on the intimidating project you need to face or the new, perhaps difficult, habit you need to establish. The beauty of the monthly challenge is what you have actually accomplished at the end of it. You have reached the 30-day goal; you are free to quit; but you find that you've completed the project, or established the habit, and now that beastie isn't staring at you from the dark corners of your closet while you try to sleep. It's been tamed.

My Monthly Challenge Muscle-Flexing Plan

So this is my plan for building self-discipline in my life: take on a different challenge every month

for the rest of this brand-new year of 2008. I did miss January, yes, but I still have 11 months left. 11 Challenges. 11 Chances to Exercise Self-Discipline until I am the Self-Disciplined Life-Improving Personally Growing Muscled Equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger. (And maybe I'll go into politics then, since Arnold did...)

I know what my first challenge for February will be: To Stick to a Morning Routine. This is not very exciting and not nearly as interesting as a lot of other Monthly Challenge Possibilities (see a list below), but I think it is key to making a whole lot of other (good) things happen consistently in my life. I am so tired of that run around, always behind, totally dragging and wondering what I've accomplished at the end of the day feeling. You know the one I mean? Perhaps you want to take on a Monthly Challenge with me. (Anyone? Hello?) I'd love to have some company, and I think we all have areas that could use some improvement.

The Rules of the Game

I had better put a few guidelines in place for myself. I am trusting that the public accountability of a Hub will be motivational for me. I will be reporting in regularly on my progress, or lack thereof. Perhaps I should offer some kind of prize to a random commenter if I fail: further motivation.

Monthly Challenges (in general):

Begin on the 1st of the month and conclude on the last day of the same month.

Must be accomplished every single day of the month unless the specific month's challenge is stated otherwise at the outset.

Previous Challenges

The Get Up Early Challenge: From Feb. 1st to Feb 28th, I challenged myself get up at the same time every morning (5 am) and establish a morning routine. Overall, a successful challenge. I got up at 5 today and wasn't even sleepy!

The Life Without a To Do List Challenge: From March 1st to March 26th, I challenged myself to live without making a to do list everyday. Any day. Successful in that I didn't make a daily to-do list, unsuccessful in that it wasn't a change I wanted to incorporate permanently, so I called it over on March 26th. It was an interesting experience and has definitely helped me be less obsessive about lists and more balanced about how much I put on them. I am relieved to be able to have one now!

And Next.... April begins tomorrow. I haven't decided on a Monthly Challenge for this beautiful, wet, Spring month yet. Let's review the possibilities: Read the rest of this entry »