Ever heard the phrase:

The days are long but the years are short.

If you’re a parent you know how true this is. As a child you think you’ll never be a grown up. You wait and wait and wait til you’re a teenager. Then you wait an eternity and finally you can drive! You wait and wait and you graduate. And college and/or marriage. Before you blink you now have a litter of children that are halfway to their own graduation.

If you’re anything like me I go through my days wondering how I’m going to make it. All energy is gone by 9am. No amount of coffee, soda or chocolate is going to help. It’s pure chaos. Little voices begging for attention. Diapers need changed. Mouthes need fed. And I still haven’t showered.

The days I remember the best are the ones that are organized. The ones that are run on routine.

This may look overwhelming and it is a lot of work. But the couple of days that it takes to create a family schedule will save you so much more time! And children love routines! Do you ever notice how their little internal clocks know exactly when snack time is?

This particular schedule was created using the MOTH system {Mangers of Their Homes}. I highly recommend this book. It took me three years before coming around and actually buying it. Really wish I had bought it at first thought. This is helpful for all ages but I think particularly so if you have small ones. And it may say it’s for homeschoolers but truly anybody and everybody will benefit.

My favorite part of these books is that they strongly encourage you to seek the Lord’s will for your schedule. I’ve tried many times to use other peoples schedules and failed miserably. Not all families run their houses the same. And priorities vary widely. Where one family may have time to wash their baseboards another family may need that time for cleaning their garage. You get the idea. Pray and listen to His will. You’ll be surprised at what He reveals to you.

Please do not think that you have to get it all done each day! Cause you won’t. If you do you may be doing too much. Make time for interruptions. Especially if the Lord opens the door to a new friend or a chance for your children to play. Or maybe you just need a rest! Don’t be Martha. Be thankful for your schedule but don’t hold to it as gospel.

{If you need help in beginning your children {or yourself} on a chore schedule look into their book Managers of Their Chores. But that’s another post}

Blessings!

Day after day the clothes pile up. They spill into the laundry room and cover the floor. As our family grows so do the demands of my most dreaded chore. I really have tried, may times, to keep up.

-Do all the laundry for the week on Monday – fail

-Do one load a day -fail

– Pack away most of the clothes and everybody gets ten outfits – ok, now this worked the best but still there is a floor covered in dirty clothes begging for attention – semi fail

I worry that it’s a matter of the heart. Is the lack of clean clothes telling my family that I have my priorities wrong? Yes. But at the same time I recognize who I am.

Wife to an amazing entrepreneur and football coach.

Mother to five small yet quickly growing children.

Friend and sister in Christ to many.

All these distractions pulling me in different directions. And I gladly forego the laundry. Hoping to find clean clothes in a hidden basket tomorrow. But I’ve finally found joy in laundry.

It’s extra work. It involves carrying heavy, wet clothing in a basket when I easily could have tossed it in the dryer. Pinning each and every shoulder to the line. There’s always the risk of a bird flying over, too…

But line drying rejuvenates this tired soul. The children may or may not join me. They normally help with the first shirt and then drift indoors. Which leave me alone with my thoughts. The breeze rustles the leaves. The birds chatter. I carefully hang each item. Taking note of how many of my girls have worn this shirt. How I now have little boy outfits dappled down the line. How soon will it be til I’m washing his football jersey? When will the girls stop wearing matching dresses? All too soon this line will hold only the clothes of my husband and myself.

So for now I will thank the Lord for these tiny rompers. The break from the every day to pause from the noise and remember how fleeting this season is. To appreciate these gifts, these blonde, curly haired, squeaky voiced, chubby thighed gifts.

Blessings!

Summer in the south is something beautiful to behold. A common tree around this area is the Crepe Myrtle. Purple, pink, white and fuscia color the streetways. I come from the north where flowering trees only happens in the spring. So I’m tickled that we kind of get to enjoy spring for two seasons. But along with that comes the beetles. They cloak our Crepe Myrtle. Turning leaves into lace. And speckling darkness throughout. Determined to enjoy the trees beauty before the beetles destroy it I went out with heavy scissors. I shook the tree branches trying to release the beauty killers. Next the water hose assisted. Alas, I took the scissors to the flowered branches and cut five clusters off. Each section was still housing a good number of beetles. I had to take the scissors to the beetles to brush them off. They were tough. They clung to the flowers. So as I knocked them off bits of flower were removed as well.

Is that not how God prunes us? Aren’t we something beautiful that He has created only to be attacked by darkness? As we go through our dark times our beauty will surely be destroyed – eaten through. But if we will allow the Lord to prune us we can surely bring glory to His name.

The pruning process is difficult and painful. So many times I strive only to fall back to the easy {and harmful} ways of the world. The excuses flow.

“But this is who I am…”

“Why should I change? I didn’t do anything wrong…”

“But it’s funny…”

“This is how I was raised…”

“Well I’m not as bad as so-and-so…”

Walk away from the excuses. Allow the pruning process to hurt and eagerly anticipate the change that’s taking place within.

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11

Blessings!