We've all heard of Back to School, but occassionally I go "Back to Schedule"!

Today is that day for me. I've been having urges to recreate our schedule, but the final straw was really the dog. She keeps pooping in our closet. It's totally gross and it's because we don't get her out first thing in the morning. When talking to the kids and warning them that we'd get rid of the dog if this kept up, I realized it was MY fault. Yes, the dog is THEIR responsibility, but I was not keeping and enforcing a schedule to help them remember. 

So I got up today at around 6am and took out my trusty Managers of Their Homes (MOTH) book again. (www.titus2.com).  I worked out a tentative schedule for each member of the household - tentative because it takes a few days to really nail it down. It's a balance of what you want/should be doing and what has become a natural rythm for your family. 

I recently had a moment of clarity. I love those. Anyway, I was disciplining my son, Andrew. It wasn't the first time that day. Andrew is my challenging child. He is very strong-willed. He feels so strongly that things should go a certain way 

He focuses his mind on something and WILL not change it. In fact, he HATES change. I mean, he LOATHES it. We recently moved to a huge house with lots of space outside to play. It's a nearly perfect place, but he wants to move back into our 1100 sq. ft. house where you could only play in our little backyard. He hates change. If I had to compare him to an animal, I wouldn't hesitate to say, "bulldog". Any bulldog owners out there will know exactly what I mean. They are stubborn and opinionated, but oh so charming. That's Andrew.

We have had to walk such a firm line with him to keep him from being rebellious. Well, we were up in his room. He was throwing a fit. I was sitting with him explaining that he's not to act that way. It hit me with a blow - I may never be able to control him. I may never be able to control him. That's exactly what went through my brain. I may never be able to make him conform to the image I have of a good child. He might always make me look bad. The next question that ran through my brain was, "Can I love him the way he is?" Can I accept him even if he's different than what I want? Maybe he'll walk a path that doesn't make sense to me.Maybe he'll show us a different perspective on life. If I try to make him conform to the identity I want him to have, our family may miss out on his unique gifts. So I set him free ... in my heart.

I find myself lacking this. My husband has it. He gets up faithfully, early each day and heads to work until the waning of the day. He is in construction, and he's his own boss. Talk about self-motivation. This guy is totally a self-starter. I struggle here.

What do you do when you don't have the will-power to fight your way through the dense jungle forest of your mind with that machete of focus?

I'm sitting here singing to myself, "Life is a highway. I'm gonna ride it, all night long ..." But maybe life is more like a river. I can't help coming back to this analogy time and again. Perhaps it's the vision God knows will inspire me. We once went tubing down a small river in Tennessee. It took all day, and it was a mixture of rushing rapids and slow, almost motionless, meandering. The exciting rapids were very memorable. In fact, you found yourself just waiting all the time for the next one. "Is it coming up? Do you hear it?" How often our own lives are like that. We live for the holidays or special occassions or even ... tragedies. Some of us live drama to drama. I've heard it said that it's those times of trial that define us. However, that may be a mistake. Certainly the rushing moments are the times that our true nature often comes out un-restrained, but the fires that created that nature seem to me to exist in those meandering times. Either we're waiting for the next big thing or we're living in those times - enjoying the scenery and the sunshine.

It is during these slow spans that our habits of character are fashioned or forgotten. How do you spend your time when life is barely moving along? Some prefer to escape with false or vicarious excitement like television, romance novels, other people's lives, internet, etc. We can all think of these excapes. That's not to say those things in and of themselves hold much vice. Rather, it's the temptation to divert attention from the real life that entails encumberment. So many times we don't recognize a real life because of our entrapment in the fantasy.

So, what do we do during the lull? Create drama? Fight? When I'm in the middle of the chaos of life, I tend to function so much better. I've always done better under pressure or time constraints or busyness. But those darn slow parts ... When I get really behind ... ugh.
Fight or flow? That is my question tonight.

Fight my way through? Set a plan of attack. Make a list. Take each hill successively until the job is complete? This is my instinct, but I find myself unable to make that list. I cannot put my life into a mathmatical equation and get anything coherent from it just now. What about flowing? Perhaps it would do me more good (and my family more good as well) to put off the fight. Take each moment and contemplate the scenery, so to speak. Maybe my van does need cleaning out, not forgetting that, but studying it. Why is it a mess? Well we just returned from two funerals, one in MI and one in FL. We've had four ball games this week. {mosgoogle}  Okay, time to adjust. I won't fight it. I will pick up one shoe, one cookie, one wrapper when I see it. Okay, my bedroom is a mess. Why? Well, I don't really honor my bedroom right now. That could indicate some want of honor for myself and my marriage. I'll have to pray about that. But some of it is overrun laundry from those same trips. It's gonna take a little time to recover from those funerals. I give myself the pleasure and privilege of time, right now. I already folded some of the laundry from the trips while attending to a sick baby. I made a step. It's a slow one, but that is the part of the river I'm on.