Have you ever been scrolling through social media and compared your life to the pictures you saw?
Have you ever felt like a failure? Have you felt like you weren’t enough?
Have you had a case of the ‘if only’? If only I were richer? If only I had a nicer home? Etc, etc.
Continue reading “Finding PEACE By Losing The Labels”
I had planned to write this post earlier, but I’ve been a bit busier than expected. It’s better late than never, right? We have had a lot going on, but I haven’t stressed. I have had an unusual sense of CALM and PEACE that I haven’t felt in a long time, so I really want to share what works for our family.
I read something earlier today about stress, worry, and anxiety coming from feeling like we don’t have control over the future… guess what? No one has control over the future… we have to trust in GOD and surrender those feelings to HIM. When we do this, we will become rooted in HIM, and HE will give us PEACE.
Now, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t plan for the future, or neglect our responsibilities, but we should release the stress of them to GOD. We can rest in the assurance that HE is in control, and HE will do what is best for us. We need to make sure that we are taking care of all that HE has BLESSED us with, and do our best to model HIS love to our families and all of those around us.
The Proverbs 31 woman shows us some of the ways that she modeled this attitude. We can strive to be more like her in our lives. I am working on a study for this!
First thing, I want to remind you that everyone’s home and family are different, so what works for me or someone else may not work for you. However, if you take some of what works for me and tweak it for your family, I truly believe you will find a bit of peace in your routines.
A long time ago, I made a file card system to help keep our chores organized. I then expanded that to include other areas of our lives to keep me from forgetting important events. It also helps me to think about things beforehand so I can better prepare for them. Am I always prepared for things that happen unexpectedly? No, but I can usually pull something together pretty quickly to accommodate changes because of the routines that we already have in place.
As I said, household chores were a BIG challenge for me at one time in my life. Part of that was that someone I was with insisted that a spotless house needed to be my TOP PRIORITY… things have since changed for the better, and we are not around this person anymore. This system came about as an effort to find a balance between a clean house, a garden, and my kids. It was very successful at helping us get the things completed as they needed to be, and I no longer had to fight any LAUNDRY MONSTERS.
The next biggest challenge I faced was the ‘What’s for Dinner?’ dilemna. Thankfully, that question was included in the daily routines that I had created with our previous system, but I needed to work on it a bit. I started meal planning, which helped me develop a better grocery shopping routine. Previously, I had just gone to the grocery store with no real plan, and shopped for my usuals and then just tried to make them last through the month. If something unexpected came up, I didn’t have a plan for it.
Continue reading “Finding Peace Through Routines”
Hello friends!
We are getting closer to the wedding date and it seems like we’ve had one thing after another.
First, it was the freezer after the hurricane… but then it started working a little better until it didn’t. It started making a noise last week and then it began thawing very quickly. We had water everywhere!
Continue reading “It couldn’t wait…”
It seems like our lives can get so hectic so quickly without us realizing it is even happening. I know that I seem to get one thing running smoothly but then ten other things seem to just fall off the track and then everything turns to CHAOS.
For me, the very first thing I need to do before starting this process is to find a little time for me & God… I often find that life feels overwhelming when I haven’t been able to have any quiet time for myself. I have tried getting up earlier but that just isn’t working out right now, I often would take a few minutes after lunch when the baby was down for a nap but our school routines have been out of whack since adding a new kiddo, when the time bedtime rolls around I am worn out. I do find little bits of time here and there to have little chats with God but I just haven’t been able to have my devotional time and I think that may be part of the reason that I am feeling so overwhelmed.
When something is frustrating me I often go to Him in prayer and ask Him to help me and show me ways that I can change or that we can change as a family. I ask Him to give me wisdom and guidance about the changes and things we need to work on so that they will benefit everyone.
Where do we start when it seems like everything is the problem?
We use this process in our home for a lot of different problems, part of it we even use for teaching the kids to make good choices. I’ll give a couple of examples of how we have used this system in the past.
This might be the most difficult part of the whole process because sometimes it can be difficult to actually narrow down what the problem actually is when you are feeling overwhelmed. Many times there are multiple problems and sometimes the problems are not actually what we think they are. If you do find yourself with a multitude of problems then just try to focus on the biggest one first and work on ONE AT A TIME or you may find yourself even more overwhelmed and frustrated.
Maybe your mornings are very hectic and it just feels like you can’t get anywhere on time. What’s the problem?
Continue reading “Getting in the right mindset to simplify… setting up routines”
Here is a blog post about our 10 month old baby’s most recent diagnosis of leukemia:
shyannethelittlegirlwhocould.wordpress.com/2021/05/07/it-all-came-crashing-down/
Here is the link to the GoFundMe that has been set up for us:
Pollywog's Place Blog 