Day 3- Love God with All Your Heart

Yesterday I had a revelation about how I am letting my menial tasks hinder opportunities to build the relationships I have with my children. I said that I would work to correct that and I followed through on my words today. It was awesome! Sammi and I had two and a half uninterrupted hours of play time. And as if from God's direct blessing, I was able to complete all of my household chores in only 20 minutes tonight. Woo hoo!
I was riding high; so ready to see what day 3 had in store for me...

...and then I read the chapter.

Today's lesson: Love God with All Your Heart, taken from Mark 12-"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength." Holladay takes the terms "heart," "soul," "mind," and "strength" and translates them as follows:
heart=feelings
soul=decisions
mind=thoughts
strength=actions
By taking the abstract terms and translating them, we should be able to gauge how we are relating to God. "Am I telling God how I feel?" "Am I letting God inpact my decisions?" "Is God making an impression on my thought pattern?" "Am I using God's love to interact with the world around me?" All of this I liked.

Then I get to the next part where we are to receive examples to "love God with all our hearts" in a concrete way. Holladays suggestion is that instead of merely saying a silent prayer in our head, we should pray aloud to simulate more of a real conversation.
I am not knocking Holladay for suggesting this. It actually makes a lot of sense. Rather than search for the perfect thing to say logically in my head, I should express my thoughts and feelings aloud to him just as I would to a close girlfriend over a glass of wine. It is a beautiful sentiment...I just don't wanna.

I think the big problem here is that I realized I might feel embarrassed talking to God this way. Could I really be that intimate with God without letting my brain butt in to tell me that I'm acting foolish or talking to myself? I am afraid that talking to Him aloud may take me too far out of my comfort zone...

And I know that I should be super zealous for Christ, but it's something I am still growing into. Let's be honest here. I am writing all of my thoughts on a blog that I am not even sure anyone is reading instead of discussing it in a small group setting as suggested by the pastor. If I can't feel comfortable enough to do that, how can I make myself comfortable with the idea of praying out loud?

Here is the other thing. Say I try it, and it goes well for me. My husband is not here now, but would I be able to continue it once he got back? He is actually a non-believer. I pray in my heart all the time that he would come to know Christ and receive salvation, but would this help win him over at all, or would he look at his wife and wonder if she had gone completely nuts?

Oy-my aching head.

Day 2- The Attraction of Lesser Things

Okay, so to briefly recap, I have just begun reading a book entitled "The Relationship Principles of Jesus" in conjunction with the new series being taught in my church, "40 Days of Love."
Yesterday's introductory lesson explained how we are to have two main priorities in life: loving God and loving people. Today's lesson talked about how we allow lesser objects (money, tasks, hobbies, career, recreation, etc. etc.) to trump the importance that we place on our relationships.
The author asks a series of questions to help us discover what we truly place our highest values on. Here are the questions along with my answers:

-What's the first thing I think about in the morning? There's Jack on the monitor. Better get him before he wakes up Sammi...oh, too late.
-What does your schedule tell you about your priorities? Mon: Ballet and Tap; Tues: KinderJam; Wed: Ballet and Tap; Thurs: MOPS/playdate; Fri: Mother's Day Out Program; Sat: T-ball; Sun: Sunday School and Family Movie Night
-As you look at your checkbook, what gets paid, no matter what? Everything gets paid. But if it ever became an issue, I would pay less on my student loan before I took my kids out of anything.
-What do you find yourself talking about most? The blog don't lie! Mostly kids, kids, kids.
-What's the last thing you think about when your head hits the pillow at night? God, please protect my husband and his buddies.

I am a stay-at-home mom, so it didn't surprise me at all that (with the exception of one) my answers were all centered around my duties to the kids. They really are my whole world, and I am so happy and so blessed to be able to stay home with them before they start school. However, as involved a mother as I am, I still feel like I am slighting them relationally.
Since I am not working, most of the day-to-day household chores rest on me. (As they should; I am the person here most of the day.) So yes, I am a mother. But I am also a housekeeper. No one would argue against which one of those titles should take higher priority over the other. But I often find myself feeling guilty at some point in the day because I focused more on the housework than on my kids.

I'll try to be a bit more specific here. After we get home from the kids' morning activity each day, I feed the kids lunch and put Jack down for his nap. Even though my son is 18 months old, he still regularly naps between 2 1/2-3 hours each day. (Get jealous!)
Obviously, this is a very productive time for me. I usually try to take the first thirty minutes or so to knock out some pressing chore while Sammi plays a computer game or quietly in her bedroom, and then (ideally) I meet up with Sammi to spend one-on-one time with her until Jack wakes up. More often than not, though, I always find one other thing that I want to get done around the house, and Sammi ends up playing on the computer for an hour...or an hour and a half. Or she gets bored after an hour and plays quietly in her room for an hour before she asks me to come upstairs to play and I am able to knock out one 15 minute game of Princess Yahtzee before the laundry needs to get switched over...and then I am distracted all over again.

And here's the truth--the chores I do in the house during this time are pointless. I have two preschoolers. If I sweep the floors, then someone is sure to leave graham cracker crumbs all over the downstairs the moment I give it to them at snack time. If I do the laundry, then Jack is sure to pee all over the sheets in his crib. If I take out the trash, we will just make more. If I do the dishes, they will shortly reappear in the sink. If I mow the grass, it will continue to grow for me to cut it the next week.
These chores that I find so pressing in the moment are easily done and just as easily undone. They will always be there for me to do--Piling up in the sink, pouring out of the hampers, crumbling and being tracked across the floor. What will not always be there is Jack's lengthy afternoon nap. (It is a blessing, but a fleeting one, I know!) And once Jack's naps are gone, so are my one-on-one opportunities to play with Sammi.
In fact, my time at home with them won't last forever. They will not always be preschoolers who live with me every hour of the day. One day, they will not live with me at all. And I can promise you, even then, the stupid dishes will still be there!

So here is my goal from here on out. Thirty minutes--that's it! Everything else that doesn't get done can just wait until after the kids go to bed.
(Because the Lord knows I need an excuse to keep me off of Facebook!!)

40 Days...Day 1

Today during church service, the pastor introduced us to a new series- 40 Days of Love. To correspond with the message the church issued out each family a book entitled "The Relationship Principles of Jesus" which has a lesson for us to read throughout the next 40 days and then we are to discuss the teachings with a small group (my church's form of a Bible Study.)
Well, Sunday small group times don't fit in with my kid's nap schedules and it is a lot of driving and gas to try to get there any other day of the week...so hello, small group :)

Today's introductory chapter asked us to focus on the point that relationships are the most important thing in the world. Not stuff. Not status. Our greatest purpose in life is to love God and to love other people. (Mark 12: 29-31)

I have to say honestly here, because I am just starting this devotional and talking to cyber-space, but I did not think that I would be very moved by this series when it was first presented. Why? Because I am already a "Golden Rule Girl." I feel like I am a genuinely nice person--friendly to everyone, even when I don't want to be. And I am highly considerate of other people's feelings, at times feeling overly-empathetic. Almost like if I made myself be any nicer, I would turn into a doormat.

Then I read the first sentence of the introduction to this stinkin' book... "If I asked you what your number 1 goal is in life, what would be your answer?" Our pastor asked us this question this morning too, but I didn't know my answer. Tonight I thought about it a little longer. What I want more than anything else--as trivial as it sounds-- is acceptance. Acceptance from everyone. I want strangers to like me. I want my kids to like me, even in their teenage years (shooting for the moon on that one.) I want my husband to like me, even when I wake up in the morning and my breath smells and I have a dried spit puddle on the sheets. I want my friends to like me so much that I never have to worry about how my social calendar will stack up. I want my Facebook "friends" to like me so much that I never have a single status update go un-commented or un-liked. (lol) I could go on and on here, but you get the jist...
Wanting people to like me so much means that I am doing every nice thing in my power to earn their acceptance. I am friendly, because I want those friendly feelings returned. This might not be all that terrible in and of itself. But it's still not right.
At the end of each chapter there is a "question to consider." Today's is "Have I asked Jesus if I'm doing what's most important?" As soon as I read that, I knew that Jesus would tell me 'no.' Being nice and friendly to people is one thing; loving them is quite another. (I do want to put in a side note here to say that I do deeply and madly love my children and my husband and I am so wonderfully grateful and full of love for my friends.) However, I have come to the revelation today that if I am doing any nice thing for any other reason than doing it out of love, then I am getting it all backward. I must act on love first for the sake of love--then any extra happy inkling I get out of it is a fortunate side effect.

So there's my Day 1. The journey begins. And I am very much hoping I get as much out of it for the next 39 as I did today.