Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Value of Daily Routines

The Value of Daily Routines

A thought occurred to me today as I raced against time to get everything done on my imaginary to-do list.

A few months ago I read Holly Pierlot’s book “ A Mothers Rule of Life” and since applying what I learned in this book to my daily life, I have been pretty consistent. Then this week there was an unexpected change of events in our family, which threw my routine out of order, and I so I spent most of today trying to make up for lost time.

Somebody’s paying the price for this; I won’t mention how my son’s have spent most of the day.

The thought that came to me was how much I have come to value or even rely on having a daily schedule, and how much peace it has brought to our home. What did I ever do without it?

I realized I could say the same about my spiritual life. Before I truly encountered Christ, and had a scheduled prayer life, how did I ever get through life without prayer?

If I don’t commit to a schedule to get housework done, then I quickly realize that it is Saturday and now I have to catch up on laundry and cleaning all in one day. This can happen also with our prayer life, don’t we realize when we are inches deep in a struggle that perhaps we should turn to prayer, and we play catch up with God.

I can’t tell you why I didn’t learn this lesson at a younger age, but I know I want to impart this lesson on my children. When they have a school assignment they have a few weeks to complete, I will help them with creating a schedule to complete the assignment little by little, instead of allowing it to be completed the night before the due date.

This all points back to realizing that time is a gift, and we really need to be conscience of how we spend our time, instead of playing catch up we really should divide our day and approach tasks, little by little.

This way today I could have spent a few minutes with my boys, instead of attempting to catch up on time lost with them on another day. When we get into this habit, I am sure our children will grow up way too fast and when we are ready for a catch up day they won’t want to spend catch up days with us.