Book Recommendations and Signing Off

I've been reading! In the last few months, I've been sneaking in some time to read here and there, and it's wonderful! This is going to provide strong evidence for just how much of a nerd I am, but here are my recent reads: Bringing Up Geeks: How to Protect Your Kids' Childhood in a Grow-Up-Too-Fast World by Marybeth Hicks, Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches by Rachel Jankovic, and Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living by Tsh Oxenreider.

Obviously, I have some sort of addiction to books with lengthy subtitles. Nonetheless, I would recommend all three. The first book offers some advice on how to help your kids resist the hyper-materialistic, hyper-sexualized culture that works so hard to suck them in. The second is a very encouraging and very convicting book on relating to and loving your kids in a godly way. The third offers an approach to scaling down a house and a schedule that are over-packed with unnecessary stuff.

This is the topic that I wan to address just a little more. In Organized Simplicity, Tsh encourages her readers to spend some time thinking about a purpose statement for their family. And the short version of the rest of the book is that anything that doesn't mesh with that purpose statement should go. I am at the very beginning of this process, but our purpose statement is very likely going to grow out of this: Our purpose is to glorify God. This happens to be strikingly similar to the purpose statement that Tsh came up with for her family, but in my defense, I thought of it before I turned the page and read her family's purpose statement, so I'm still claiming it as our own.

Now, a tangent: I have been having a hard time blogging lately. While Gavin was being monitored and going though tests and his surgery, I really enjoyed blogging. Not just about him, but about other things going on in our lives, too. It was such a great outlet for me that I thought I would really miss it if I stopped after Gavin was better. So I continued. But life is crowding it out now. I find that it is a chore. I find that I need to play catch-up. I didn't get around to blogging that Carter fell and got stitches. I didn't get a chance to report that I'm taking violin lessons again. I haven't been feeling up to writing about our whole family being sick right now. I've been too busy nursing the hurts, taking temperatures, and practicing for my next lesson.

So that leads me to conclude that blogging has to go. (At least for now. Maybe I will take it up again if I have just cause.) Hopefully it has served my purpose in desiring to glorify God, but I can't keep up with it well enough for it to continue to do so. If it was energizing to me and helped my serve my family better by being a creative outlet, that would be fine, but honestly, I'd rather be playing the violin (or reading a book...or organizing a closet) than typing right now. (Yes, organizing is energizing to me. But that shouldn't be surprising--think about it: I even read about organizing.)

I'd like to think the blogging world needs me, but my family needs me more. They need me to spend my down time with things that energize me and make me a better mom.

To my blogging friends, I hope you are hearing me clearly: it is absolutely not wrong for a busy mom to spend time blogging. There are plenty of ways that blogging can an does fit within your purpose and schedule. It just doesn't fit within mine.

So in the next few months I am going to be analyzing the rest of my life. I'll be taking a good look at my stuff and my schedule and purging the things that do not belong. And if you want to hear about it, I guess you're just going to have to call me. :)

Resolutions

I never make new year's resolutions. I figure no one ever keeps them; I wouldn't either; so why bother in the first place? This year, though, I've decided to make a few resolutions. The obvious thing to do at this point is to publish them on my blog so that friends and family can see how I'm failing to keep my resolutions. Yep, good idea.


1. I will read my Bible more. (Note how I left out a specific goal.)

2. I will exercise...at least once this year. Gotta start somewhere.

3. I will invite people over to my house more often. I will fight my perfectionist tendencies and accept the fact that my house does not need to be flawless and my cooking does not need to be amazing. I will recognize that time spent with friends is what's important. (That's three for the price of one.)

4. I will start things and not finish them. Not as easy as it sounds. With three kids running around, I pretty much know that I will get interrupted. It doesn't matter if a task takes five minutes or thirty; there's no way I will get from start to finish without at least one sidetrack. This is sometimes paralyzing for me. I can't bring myself to start anything because I don't know when it will get finished. No more. I will start doing dishes. I will start doing laundry. I will start sorting through the giant pile of stuff on my dresser. I am determined to just start. And start again. And again. Because getting something done is better than getting nothing done.

That's enough because that's probably more than I can handle in one year. If I think of it, I'll let you know how it's going.