I love this little girl. It’s hard to believe that in just two weeks she’ll be two years old. Every time I blink, it seems that more of her life has passed by.
I have been wrapped up in work and assignments over the past couple of months. The work is good, but I’m sad that I haven’t spent enough time blowing bubbles and drawing on the driveway with my little lady.
We’ve done those things, but we haven’t done them enough. Sometimes I feel like life is happening to me. Like I’m on the outside looking in. Like I’m not actually living it.
The key, I think, is to slow down enough to take it all in. Take pictures. Capture the moment. Draw and laugh and sing and blow bubbles. The work can wait.
She is my most important work. Sometimes I forget that, but don’t worry, she has her own ways of reminding me.
I don’t want to wake up 16 years from now and wonder if we played enough, laughed enough, and loved enough.
So I’m putting on the brakes and slowing down for a while. God gave me this one life. I’m going to live it.
Will you slow down and live it with me?
Until next time, grace and peace.
{print available from MaryKateMcDevitt}
I stumbled across this print on pinterest this morning and the words stopped me in my tracks. It’s easy to let our situations dictate our attitudes, but the truth is that we control our emotions. We shouldn’t let them control us.
So here’s my question for you: How happy are you?
If you’re waiting on life to be perfect before you can settle into happiness, you’ll be waiting for a long time. Life will never be perfect. It’s better to choose to live happily now. The rest will follow.
That’s my two cents, anyway.
Until next time, grace and peace.
It seems that the running theme of these monthly update posts is busy-ness. July was no different; in fact, it was the busiest and most chaotic month yet. We visited with Dennis’ family on the farm and then returned to the farm to lend a hand when Logan had the first round of seizures. We went to the Smoky Mountains with my family. I wrote articles and curriculum and designed a custom wedding suite. Dennis tore apart the master bath and slowly started rebuilding it. It was a crazy month.
And when things get crazy, I enter survival mode. I stayed up late to complete my work and neglected running. I got farther behind in my Bible reading and struggled to maintain any sense of order in our household.
I always thought that if I just worked a little bit harder, if I was a little more disciplined, that I would be able to do everything and be everything, but that’s just not true. I’m discovering that a disciplined life is only possible if the life is structured for discipline. I’ve been trying to introduce discipline to my life by addressing separate pieces of the whole, but it’s like trying to neatly stack books on an overflowing bookcase. There’s no room for it.
Hence the decision for Micah to start preschool. On one hand, three hours a day doesn’t seem like much, but on the other hand, it more than doubles what I had previously. It gives me precious quiet time alone to read the Bible, and it allows me to work during work hours and leave it behind when the day is over. That means that I’ll have more time to do things like go running and maintain meaningful relationships and actually be intentional in all areas of my life.
At least, I hope it will. We shall see how it goes. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you updated.
Until next time, grace and peace.
I never meant to neglect the blog for almost the entire month of July, but when my life gets chaotic, some things have to slide. Unfortunately, the blog has been one of them.
But changes are afoot in the Jones household. Most notably, little Miss Micah is starting preschool next week. I know. Preschool for an almost two-year-old? And the answer is yes.
For far too long, I’ve been trying to do everything. I thought that being more disciplined would help me get more accomplished, but in actuality, it hasn’t. It was a tough decision to send Micah to preschool, but I think it’s best for all of us.
She’ll spend her mornings at the daycare, during which time I’ll hopefully focus on my ongoing writing projects and social networking (including this here blog). Then I’ll pick her up, we’ll eat lunch together, and she’ll go down for a nap. During which time I’ll focus on designing and creating pretty paper. Then she’ll wake up from her nap, and my workday will be over. We’ll play together until Dennis gets home, then I’ll make a nice home-cooked meal, she’ll get a bath and go to bed, and Dennis and I will have some much-needed time together before we go to bed. Together.
That’s the plan anyway.
As it stands now, after we get up and eat breakfast, we watch a bit of Sesame Street (that’s what Micah’s doing in the picture above), and then we both head into the office where I try to work while Micah clambers all over me. I try to keep her from coloring on the walls and pulling all the books off my shelves. We somehow make it through the morning, me ignoring her for the most part, and then we shovel food in for lunch, and I throw her into bed so I can finally get some work done. Except the small window of time that is her nap is never enough for me to cross off everything on my list, so when she wakes up, we’re usually back in the office together until Dennis gets home, and then I’m back in here after she goes to bed, while Dennis hangs out in the den alone and then goes to bed alone. I then work into the wee hours in the morning before falling into bed. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Not exactly familial bliss, if you know what I mean.
Something had to give. So I gave up trying to do everything.
I’m excited for Micah, because I know she’ll love playing with some other kiddos her age, and she’ll thrive in the structured environment. I’m also a touch sad, because in a way it feels like I’ve somehow failed. I know that’s not the truth, but sometimes feelings speak pretty loudly.
She’s not a baby anymore. She’s a little girl. This is just one part of growing up.
We’ll survive. I may be a blubbering mess come Monday, but it’s the best thing for us right now.
How’s that for a change?
Until next time, grace and peace.
Sigh. It’s hard to believe that yet another month has passed. In all honesty, June was really about reclaiming my life. At the beginning of the month, I was utterly and completely overwhelmed by all that I had piled on my plate. Between my writing deadlines, Minted challenges, VBS, youth camp, and plain old everyday life, it was a pretty wild ride.
I’m starting to realize how much I crave order in my life. If I’m going to work, I have to have an organized workspace. I need a clean desk and an empty inbox to really concentrate. The level of disorder in my home is a direct reflection of the disorder in my priorities and attention as of late. When I closed the etsy shop, I did it because it had become priority number one. I let everything else slide when I had orders to fill, and I became obsessed with selling more cards and making more money. Sales are good, but I couldn’t keep up with the pace I had set, and our lives reflected it.
Stepping back for a few moments was really good for me. During the time that the shop was closed, I was able to go to Centrifuge with our youth group, and it was completely refreshing. To be honest, I never really expected to be on the receiving end of the teaching there, but the camp pastor, Chad Poe, spoke directly to my heart and really encouraged me to refocus my attention. I had become very intentional about building my business, but I had lost sight of the things that truly matter.
All of that to say, June has been a month about being intentional with my time and attention. I have continued to run regularly, and it has helped me tremendously to leave the house and work behind for a little while and simply hit the pavement. I’m still reading my Bible, but I’m also still behind. As I frenetically tried to catch up so I could check it off my list, I realized that I was missing the point. I was rushing through the reading for the sake of saying that I had completed it. So I’ve decided to release myself from catching up. I’ve developed the discipline of twice daily Bible reading; now I’m working on reading it with intention, which is something that I should have been doing all along.
As I type this, the household is back in order and manageable again. It’s my goal to keep it that way.
Until next time, grace and peace.
