It’s not easy to maintain that ‘post-retreat’ high. Any time spent away from home, in the company of fellow Catholics, and devoted to prayer and renewal leaves a soul craving more and wanting to find ways to include that level of prayer on a daily basis. After my first retreat, I wondered how I had survived my life thus far. I realized the degree to which I had avoided God and run from His love. My greatest desire since my first retreat has been to know God better, to have an intimate relationship with Him.
And then I came home. There were children and dishes and places to go. The grocery shopping and meal planning devoured my time. I had sentenced myself to the life of a volunteer, hoping that in giving to others I would please God. As a homeschooling parent, I’m responsible for the education of my children in both an academic sense and in their spiritual growth as well. I’m a writer and need that solitary time to craft stories and write for this blog. I’m diabetic and must eat right and exercise to maintain healthy blood-sugar levels. All these things were necessary and good, but I knew I needed to streamline my life. If I truly wanted a closer relationship with God, I needed to spend more time with him.
After venting my frustrations to my husband, he helped me realize that I have bitten off way more than I can chew. It was time to simplify.
Together, we made a “Life Inventory”. It was a list of everything I was involved in and everything I need to do as a mother. And as every mother knows, there is no end to your task list. Motherhood begins the moment the blue line appears on the test and continues on non-stop until God calls you home.
My list was long:
Faith Growth
Homeschooling – planning and implementing lessons
Volunteering with Junior League
Bible Studies (3 of them)
Activities at church
Exercise (30-45 minutes a day)
Writing (ideally an hour a day, but more is better )
Time with the family
Meal planning, shopping, meal preparation
Household duties
Communication – phone calls, online time
All of these things felt necessary to me, but at the rate I was going one of two things would happen: 1) I would have to hire a secretary (which is obviously ridiculous) or 2) I would prayerfully ask God’s invention to cut things that were keeping me from him.
In the end (by that I mean more than two years later), I’m still working to keep my life simple. There are several bible studies I can do each season, so I try to pick just one at a time. Sometimes that means that my friends go on without me, and that’s emotionally difficult for me. I resigned from the Junior League – another link to friends lost, I thought, but my good friends understood why I had to do this and have continued to keep in contact with me. I divided the household chores among my older children and they have blossomed! They now understand how long it takes to do the dishes or vacuum the house and are more aware of how the little things they do can contribute to help.
Something that wasn’t on my list that I quickly realized was sucking up a great deal of time was T.V. I’ll write more on this in another post, but when I decided that I would no longer watch any T.V. programming, my schedule opened right up and I found an additional hour a day to write. Bonus!
No matter what I did with my schedule, however, I was not able to grow in my faith unless I started the day in prayer. Nothing else mattered. While I’m forever grateful for my simplified schedule and truly believe that doing less allows me to do more, a morning without prayer is a day without purpose.
Prayer is my mini-retreat, that jazzy, caffeine-like habit that pumps me up to charge through my day with my heart filled with God's love.
No comments:
Post a Comment