Do you feel rushed? Exhausted? Like you don't have enough time with your kids? Take five minutes out of your schedule to read and contemplate this. Then share an idea of how to pause in your own life every day.
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Posted March 10, 2010 at 5:05 PM
Carving out "me" time
Commentary from Mikki
Last fall I intended to uproot my family and move to Oregon. I felt like we were too stretched out with activities and people and that if we moved someplace fresh and new we'd get to a simpler life. Since then, I've realized what Simplification really means.
Or, rather, I've realized that Simplification does NOT mean wiping the slate clean and starting over. Two years ago, I lost all of my unbacked-up computer files and had to start fresh. It was frustrating, obviously, but I felt like NOW I will keep things organized and decluttered. Of course, my computer files are as chaotic as ever now. Every week I think I'm going to make the time to delete thousands of emails and unneeded files. Just like every week I think I can make a bigger dent in my office papers and accounting paperwork.
When I do get it all "done," I tell myself, life will be clean and orderly and I'll know exactly where things are when I need them, and have nothing extraneous cluttering up my space. I'll be able to breathe easily, make the time for writing, get my beloved family history papers together, put together those scrapbooks and home movies.
Selling my big house and moving to a simpler life, I thought, would help me accomplish that.
Only then the roof leaked. And I could never keep that kitchen clean enough for a house showing, let alone the entire house. And work backed up for this new website, and the pending workshops, and the church history work, and the biography for kids I'm trying to write, and the podcasts. And did I say I wanted to have more time to simply enjoy my kids?
I lost my cell phone and, for a week, lived without. It was disconcerting...and nice.
While staying with my parents over the holidays in Arizona, I didn't have wireless connection. I got home and discovered my own wasn't working so great. It was frustrating...and liberating.
I bought a planner for the New Year, of course. A chart for the wall. Added Post-Its of goals and tasks to the refrigerator.
But it didn't make me feel like my life was simpler, or better organized, or -- despite the bags of ancient papers I've released from my office -- decluttered.
As I continue to treadmill in the hopes of someday having EVERYTHING nice and neat, I have to acknowledge that it's me that has to change habits. Not my environment.
I have to stop using Friday Family Night to clean house. I have to stop seeing vacation time as the only break time.
I have to pause. On purpose. Even when it seems inconvenient.
The world won't end if I'm not at the center of things seven days a week.
Time alone, or with our kids, won't simply happen. We have to make it happen. Decluttering the house, relocating, unplugging from connections is NOT simplification.
Simplification is actively choosing to do nothing but enjoy time in "pause" mode.
I think the reason so many of us Choice Moms -- like most parents -- feel transformed when we have children is that they FORCE us to pause. They don't care about the dishes in the sink, and the bills on the counter, and the groceries that have to be restocked. They care about our time.
And so should we. Wherever we are. In the clutter and chaos that is our life.
Reader Comments
Posted March 16, 2010 at 11:30 AM
I was inspired recently on this theme by the sermon of my First Universalist Church minister, who has granted me permission to share some of his words here. I think it's a GREAT reminder for those of us who juggle perhaps a little too much on the Choice Mom path.
"Perhaps the first principle of 'Sustainable Living' is to reclaim a "sabbath day" mentality in our lives. To carve a day out of week...an hour out of a day...five minutes out of an hour...for rest, renewal, doing nothing, letting go, simply appreciating what is.
If "Sustainable Living" begins with sabbath...it continues with an intentional slowing down, as author John Ortberg explains:
"Not long after moving to Chicago," Ortberg says, "I called a wise friend to ask for some spiritual direction. I described the pace at which things tend to move in my current setting. I told him about the rhythms of our family life and about the present condition of my heart, as best I could discern it. What did I need to do, I asked him, to be spiritually healthy?
Long pause.
"You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life," he said at last.
Another long pause.
"Okay, I've written that one down," I told him, a little impatiently. "That's a good one. Now what else is there?"
I had many things to do, and this was a long-distance conversation, so I was anxious to cram as many units of spiritual wisdom into the least amount of time possible.
Another long pause.
"There is nothing else," Ortberg's friend told him.
"You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life."
...
We suffer from the "illusion that hurrying will somehow buy us more time" (The Life You've Always Wanted, 77). ... According to Ortberg, "Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time - with parents, partners, friends - it takes time - and time is the one thing that hurried people don't have" (81).
Ortberg suggests "that at the end of a day's work, those who need our love the most, those to whom we are most committed, can end up - if we're not careful - getting the leftovers...we're just too tired, or drained, or preoccupied, to love the people to whom we have made the deepest promises (82)."
Ortberg urges us to slow our lives down so that we don't sever the life giving connections we have.
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