2017!

Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas have come and gone, and today is the last day of 2016.  In fact, at this moment, there's just 65 minutes left of this year.  I'm not one for making resolutions, but there's something about the turning of the year that motivates me to start new things and make necessary changes.

One thing I decided to do for 2017 is to have a family mission statement.  I was inspired by this family's example.  I based ours on theirs, using some of the same phrases, but adding things that are personal to our family.  Sadie suggested that our motto be "Love, Kindness, and Generosity", and I think that's perfect.  And now, here's the Ellis Family's 2017 mission statement that we worked out together:

Because we have been given much, we will see the need and fill it by sharing what we have with others: food, clothes, toys, and God's love. 

We will encourage, honor, respect, and love one another by using kind words and gentle actions. 

We will practice gratitude by taking care of our belongings and always being thankful for what we have. 

We will strive to be peacemakers in all situations--quick to apologize and extend forgiveness to others. 

Finally, we commit to learning and living the gospel of Jesus Christ in order to return to live with our Heavenly Father again.

 My overall goal for 2017 is to live my life more mindfully by:

• Simplifying my possessions and household tasks, 
• Limiting the commitments that take me away from my family,
• Becoming more aware of when I am trying to multitask, and changing my focus to one thing at a time,
• Consciously setting aside time to do the things I love to do: gardening, crochet, scherenschnitte, blogging, reading, and becoming better at knitting,
• And finding small ways to save money and conserve resources (including my own energy).

And so with 43 minutes to go, I wish all of my family, friends, neighbors, and the entire world a very Happy New Year!

Busy is NOt my Badge of Honor

The last two weeks seem like a blur.  It seems like the time goes faster and faster every year.  This makes me sad, because I want to enjoy the little moments that make up every day.  I want to have time to do all the things I want to do, and the time just isn't there.  If I could stop time for short amounts (and hour or two here or there), I would use that super power all the time.

I remember my school librarian in 6th grade telling our class, "When you're 12, your life goes 12 miles an hour.  The days, weeks, and months seem to take forever to come and pass.  But when you're 35, your life goes 35 miles an hour.  When you're 60, your life goes 60 miles an hour, and the days seem to fly by."

I decided to check this theory with my grandparents (who were in their 70s at the time).  I repeated what the librarian had said to us, and then asked, "Is it true?  Do your lives go 72 & 78 miles an hour?"  My grandmother said, "Absolutely, yes.  We wake up in the morning, and before we know it, it's time to go to bed again."

Sigh.

I'm 38, and I already feel like this.  And the thing is, I don't feel like I'm THAT busy.  I don't think I am.  I think I'm not mindfully living each day.  I think I do so many things on auto-pilot--washing dishes, folding laundry, cleaning, preparing food, etc.  But I don't take time to enjoy those moments, and all the other moments in between.  Everything is a means to an end--even my interactions with my kids: "Pick up your room.  Hang up your coat.  Set the table.  Bring your laundry.  Wash your face.  Hurry and get in the car so we can get to Girl Scouts/Co-op/Playdate/Appointment/Dance class."  Rarely do I sit down with them ask them how they're doing, what they're currently interested in, what they'd like to learn, if they have a new favorite color/ice cream flavor/book series, or whatever.

Remember this talk from General Conference?  Of Regrets and Resolutions  It's the one where President Uchtdorf said,

Isn’t it true that we often get so busy? And, sad to say, we even wear our busyness as a badge of honor, as though being busy, by itself, was an accomplishment or sign of a superior life.

Is it?

That was the take-away for a lot of us, I think.  That was the 10-second soundbite that we as 21st Century People LOVE.  It's catchy, quick, bite-sized wisdom that we can turn into a meme and share on social media.  We live our lives in catchy, quick, bite-sized memes, and glimpses into modern life.  (I've heard that this is exactly what Snapchat is.)  But I digress.

President Uchtdorf's talk is so much more than 3 sentences about being busy.  Check out this meaty morsel, for example:

I think of our Lord and Exemplar, Jesus Christ, and His short life among the people of Galilee and Jerusalem. I have tried to imagine Him bustling between meetings or multitasking to get a list of urgent things accomplished.

I can’t see it.

Instead I see the compassionate and caring Son of God purposefully living each day. When He interacted with those around Him, they felt important and loved. He knew the infinite value of the people He met. He blessed them, ministered to them. He lifted them up, healed them. He gave them the precious gift of His time.  

Or this one:

Sometimes in life we become so focused on the finish line that we fail to find joy in the journey... 

Doesn’t it seem foolish to spoil sweet and joyful experiences because we are constantly anticipating the moment when they will end?

Do we listen to beautiful music waiting for the final note to fade before we allow ourselves to truly enjoy it? No. We listen and connect to the variations of melody, rhythm, and harmony throughout the composition.

Do we say our prayers with only the “amen” or the end in mind? Of course not. We pray to be close to our Heavenly Father, to receive His Spirit and feel His love.

We shouldn’t wait to be happy until we reach some future point, only to discover that happiness was already available—all the time! Life is not meant to be appreciated only in retrospect. “This is the day which the Lord hath made … ,” the Psalmist wrote. “Rejoice and be glad in it.”

But wait!  There's more!  Lots more!  I printed this talk, and am planning to reread it in its entirety today.  And then I plan to live more mindfully this week, and focus on more meaningful interactions with my family and friends. 

 

Changes

This is my 5th homeschooling year.  I was feeling pretty confident that my ducks were all in a row--I knew exactly what I wanted our family school to look like, what books I wanted to use, how each day would be structured, etc.  It's all organized into flowcharts and daily schedules, and on paper it works beautifully (and it looks awesome).  But it's not completely practical because I'm not a super structured person and, sometimes I like to change things up.

Once a week on Thursdays, we meet with our co-op from 10am-3pm.  Yes, I suppose we could cram another hour of our own family school at the beginning or end of the day, but when all is said and done, the girls learn all kinds of things at co-op, and they have time to socialize as well.

So Friday would dawn, and I would look at my To-Do list that I'd been adding to all week, and I would feel stressed and overwhelmed by the thought of trying to get it all done AND make sure the girls did their school work too.  And at the end of the day, nothing on the list and none of the school work was accomplished.

Last Friday, I woke up and lay in bed thinking about my mom's question (Are you happy?) and what I could do to make it easier to choose happiness.  All of a sudden, it hit me!  What if Friday was a catch-up day?  What if the focus is on MY To-Do list instead of the girls' school work?  And then I went a step further: What if I made a checklist of school work they needed to finish by Wednesday, and whatever was left got put on Fridays list?  Weekly Work is what I came up with.

Granted, today is the first day, so I'll wait until we've been doing this for at least a week to see how it goes.

A Happy Soul

I love blogging.  I mean, I REALLY love blogging.  Without sounding silly, it's very cleansing and freeing for me.  Over the years, my entries have become fewer and fewer until they've stopped altogether, and that makes me a little sad.  Because I love blogging.

So I thought maybe I needed a different direction, and I figured I could blog about positive things going on in the world and in my community.  The idea never really took off, though, and it fizzled faster than sparkler on the 4th of July.

Several days ago, while walking through the store, my mom turned to me and asked, "This is a strange question in the middle of Target, but...are you happy?"

This plunged me into serious introspection as I tried to decide which package of mechanical pencils to buy.  I thought about the question, and replied, "Well, I'm not unhappy."  And that's true.  I'm not unhappy.  But over the last few months, I've laughed less, been overwhelmed more, and let little things pile up on my shoulders until I've been burdened and weighed down.

Realizing this about myself, I'm on a quest to find and choose happiness every day, and feed my soul with good things.  When I'm taking good care of myself, I can take good care of others around me.

Here's some amazing inspiration from Elder Holland: The Quest for Happiness

I wish to comment on Nephi’s phrase about living “after the manner of happiness” (2 Nephi 5:27). It suggests a quest for happiness, not necessarily happiness itself.

I do not think God in his glory or the angels of heaven or the prophets on earth intend to make us happy all the time, every day in every way, given the testing and trial this earthly realm is intended to provide. As President James E. Faust (1920–2007) once phrased it: “Happiness is not given to us in a package that we can just open up and consume. Nobody is ever happy 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”1 But my reassurance to you today is that in God’s plan we can do very much to find the happiness we do desire. We can take certain steps, we can form certain habits, we can do certain things that God and history tell us lead to happiness.

In short, your best chance for being happy is to do the things that happy people do. Live the way happy people live. Walk the path that happy people walk. If you do, your chance to find joy in unexpected moments, to find peace in unexpected places, to find the help of angels when you didn’t even know they knew you existed, improves exponentially. Here are at least a few ideas about how one might live “after the manner of happiness.”

He then gives a list of 4 things that will contribute to happiness, and I wasn't expecting #4.  (You'll have to read it yourself to find out!)

I can say that in the last week, I have felt happier.  I've laughed a little bit, and made a big change to our homeschooling schedule that I think will help.  I'll share that next time.

Musings

I started this blog at the end of May 2007.  And little by little over the last nine years, my posts have been less and less frequent.  This makes me sad.  I love blogging.  I'm not a journal keeper, but I this.  I've been wondering lately if the reason why I've neglected it for so long is because it needs to be refocused (or I need to refocus) and change direction.

I've never been able to carve out enough time to get the pictures off my camera and onto the blog.  Using my cell phone to take pictures is great, but the process for getting them from the phone onto the blog is even more cumbersome, it seems like.  (And anymore, I'm just not sure that having pictures of my kids on the internet is a very safe thing.)

My life is drastically different from the way it was in 2007--but I think everyone could say that.  My kids are older, and although they're all pretty independent and really have very few activities, life just feels busy.  I would rather be present in the moments I have with them, savoring the feeling of it, imprinting the sights, sounds, and smells in my brain and on my heart to fully enjoy now and save for later.

So what should my focus be?  Parenting?  Homeschooling?  Political commentary?  There's already so many of those blogs, written by people who have far more expertise and experience than I do.  So as I've been considering, I was reminded of a couple of questions a friend asked me about homeschooling: "What homeschooling philosophy do you subscribe to?  How do you choose what to teach and how to teach it?"  My answer to her was this:

"I love the educational ideas of Charlotte Mason.  I think she really understood children and what they truly needed to know and do to be happy and successful in life.  But the philosophy that resonates with me and inspires me when I'm choosing what to share with my children is the 13th Article of Faith, and Philippians 4."  (Verses 4, 6-9, and 13.)

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul--We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things.  If there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.  (Articles of Faith, 13)

4 Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.

6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 

7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

 8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

 9 Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.

 13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.  (Philippians 4)

This is what I think I want (what I think I NEED) to blog about--the praiseworthy things in the world, the praiseworthy things in my community, the praiseworthy things in my home and my life.  Next I'll be working on a new title for my blog.

Check back soon!