May 20, 2018 | Balance, Christianity, Discipline, Faith, Fear, God, Work
For me, it usually starts with an overly ambitious to-do list and the Sunday night blues. My approach to the one: dogged white knuckle determination to conquer. My approach to the other? Red wine. And popcorn. Together.
Neither of the approaches is particularly successful and usually, by mid-week, there is panic, rushing, yelling, and the feeling like everything is spinning out of control. But there is no need to reach for a productivity book or download yet another to do list app (Yessss, I see you!)! Believe me, that is about as useful to me as watching a youtube clip on calibrating your oven temperature (yes, apparently that’s a thing). Here is my ninja action plan when I feel the to-do-list tsunami heading my way on a Monday:
Ask the difficult questions: Are you overcommitted? If the answer is yes, the next question is why? Is it FOMO? Do you equal worth to productivity (shamefaced as I write this!). Ok, so here is the reality check: Time is a finite thing, we are not able to create more of it and in fact, God deemed the amount we got to be sufficient. So if you are constantly trying to fit more into your day ask yourself why that is? Lack of discipline in what you say yes or no to? Does busyness help you hide from a calling God has given you or a truth you’d like to avoid? Ride the elevator all the way to the bottom floor where your heart/ your ego is pulling the strings and gain some insight into those brutal motivations. Without that no productivity strategy or mantra will help you change.
Stop kidding yourself about what is achievable and learn to prioritize: Just because you wrote it down doesn’t mean it’s achievable! #truthbomb. I know, you are only writing it down because it gives you a sense of control right? I know because I do it too. Learn to prioritize. Our overconnected world with pings and notifications make it seem like everything belongs in the urgent & important box and that it all requires your immediate attention. It doesn’t. If prioritization is hard for you, ask a friend or your husband or accountability partner to help you. Nothing focusses your priorities like sharing your very-ridiculous-God-complex-to-do-list with someone and getting a once-removed perspective (once they stop laughing in your face!) on what truly are the important things to accomplish in a day!
Check your truth: Our to-do list, our children’s schedule, our expectations of ourselves, just like every other action and conviction in our lives, stems from what we believe. Have you ever measured the truth your actions are based on, against the truth of God’s word? We may say with our mouths certain things that we believe, but based on the fruit that I see in my life and the lives of 99.9% of woman I know, what we actually believe is that we can and should have it all, do it all, be the be-all-and-end-all for everyone, and do it in a Pinterest perfect way that also seems effortless in order to gain the admiration from the outside world. Have you checked any of those convictions against what God actually says? If it’s true that we live according to what we believe, then maybe it’s time for a new belief?
Shorten your list: Stop sneering I am serious. There is a huge school of thought dedicated to the idea of a 3 item to-do list, a TODAY list if you will, that helps you prioritise (i.e identify what’s most important), focus (i.e not waste time on trivial to do’s just for the sake of the sense of achievement you get when you crossed it off the list) and gives you a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day because it’s supremely achievable and speaks to more long-term goals. A shorter list will revolutionize your productivity whether you are a stay at home mom, and exec, or someone who works from home or part-time because it clarifies and simplifies every day’s priorities.
Guard your peace: Like it’s a cash in transit van in the UAE. Like it’s the last glass of bubbly at a kiddies party. Busyness is one of the ways the devil can consistently distract us from God’s fingerprints in our lives.
There is a constant concatenation of spiritual events manifesting in your everyday life that you could miss if you don’t lay down your plans and pick up the light yoke offered by the One who is actually in charge here.
Honey listen, it’s not the circumstances that are overwhelming, everyone is busy. It’s the perspective that we should be getting to everything, the conviction that we should be making it look easy and have it all under control, that is the thing that truly wears women out. It’s the lies we believe that we use as a jump-off point that is the thing that actually snookers us.
If we release our desire to control it all and do it all and be it all, repent of the idea that we actually can and should, the fear we experience in being overwhelmed and the frustration we experience every time even the smallest thing threaten the precarious balance of our schedule, will go away.
Between being a time management expert, a fitness guru and clean food aficionado, a work-life balance genius and actually having it all the expectation of women today is ridiculous. Because with every new idea or strategy about what we should do or be, comes the accusation and implication of what we are not. So we find ourselves in a constant cycle of shame for which there truly is no basis. I hope this coming week you will be able to make a decision of the will to resist being overwhelmed by clinging more tightly to the truth about who God is than the lies about who you are supposed to be according to the world.
Mar 19, 2018 | Bible, Children, Christianity, Discipleship, Discipline, Faith, Family, God, Grace, Parenting, Tips, Toddlers
There are more than 3 things. Obviously. Like, that a certain time of the day – the time that was previously referred to as happy hour – would now be referred to as unhappy hour. And that someone else’s bathroom, sleeping and eating habits would be dominating my conversations for the foreseeable future (and that I would see absolutely nothing wrong with that!). While I was pregnant with my firstborn, I read all the books. I knew about sleep training and pureed organic veggies. But there where soul challenges that I was about to encounter on my journey into parenthood that no one ever told me about.
(This blog is an abbreviated version of a talk called The 10 things I wish someone had told me about being a Mom – for more info on booking a talk or workshop please click here)
I have only been a mom for 11 years. According to Malcolm Gladwell that makes me an expert. But he’s wrong. I am categorically not one! But let’s face it, as moms, we really just need all the help we can get, and if you are reading this that means you agree with me on one thing – This parenting thing is flat out hard! It’s by far the hardest thing I’ve done and I grew up with 3 brothers and I am South African and I’ve competed in an International Beauty pageant! I will take on 12 competitive blonds with perfect teeth over an 11-year-old boy on a mission any day of the week!
So here are a few thing that I wish someone had given me a heads up about:
THAT IT WOULD SHAKE THE FOUNDATIONS OF MY IDENTITY AS A PERSON:
When I became a stay at home mom, I dreaded the “So, what do you do?” Question in social settings. I felt unjustified telling people I was a stay-at-home mom. It used to be so easy to talk about the career I was so proud of, and the awkwardness I felt at this new role in my life made me realize how much of my worth and identity I found in what I did for a living.
Woman are meaning makers and meaning-seekers, and when we become moms no one highlights to us the risk that we may now exchange one wrong source of meaning and identity for another. That we may very well go from being defined by our work an achievements to being defined by our home and our kids (and their achievements). That we may go from performance reviews and bonuses to the bar for our lives being Proverbs 31 (oh my goodness can you even imagine!) and the definition of our worth as our kids and their achievements! Can you imagine living under the pressure of having the justify your mom’s entire existence with every school report, or good night’s sleep! Is it any wonder even our kids our stressed!
But God never intended for us to bank our identity on the role of a dice, on the changing landscape of our roles or our seasons. Because then every word spoken in criticism of that becomes the definition of who we are, then our (absolutely inevitable) mistakes and failures (and that of our kids) are not learning opportunities or life happening, but a declaration of who we are, failures, as moms, as people. No, God’s anchor for our identity is the unchanging conviction that He holds about us, and His unalterable word over us.
Because the gospel says that we are who we are not because of what we do or achieve but because of what Christ did and achieved.
When we are in Christ, that is the final word over us.
Then our mistakes or failings will never be the defining story of our lives because grace means that we have never really blown it.
Then all that ever needed to be achieved is finished and that is a work us moms can rest in, not strive for.
Then whatever our accomplishments, achievements, and successes become a reflection of His grace and glory in our lives.
Living this truth as the anchor of who we are testifies much more greatly to our kids than striving for achievement!
THAT WE ALL LIVE BY A DEFINITION OF SUCCESS, WHETHER WE KNOW IT OR NOT
When my eldest was in Gr R they once filled in one of those cute forms for Mothers day, they go something like this:
My moms name is ___________
Her favourite Color is _______________
Together we like to _______________
But it was my son’s answer to one question that really stopped me in my tracks, literally. Where it said My mom says (Fill in the blank) a lot, he wrote HURRY UP. Jip, it was right there in black and white, “My moms says hurry up allot”.
As a mom, I defined how good the day was by how much I had gotten done. For me, productivity has always been the ultimate measure of success. Don’t be lazy, don’t slow down, do do do, go go go! If at the end of the day, the To Do list had lots of little red tick marks on it, then it was a good day. Conversely, if a kid got sick or the car broke down or I locked myself out of the house (jip, it’s happened!) then, the day, and by definition, I – was a failure.
Whether we know it or not, our definition of success, what we deem to be the ultimate measure of “good and enough” in our lives, is what drives our decision making, what we say yer or not to, what our schedule looks like (and our kids schedules) how we spend our money and our time. Comfort, status, being liked, all of these things could be our definition of success, the thing that cracks the whip in our lives so to speak, without us even knowing it.
The challenging thing about becoming a parent is that you are no longer preaching the sermon, you are living it, and they are watching.
So I had to ask myself, what am I reflecting to my boys about what I believe true success is, and I was forced to come up with a new definition of success.
So let me ask you this. If someone were to look at your life, your schedule and your bank account, what do you think they would say your definition of success was? Because it’s this definition that is messaging to our kids what we deem to be most important.
THAT THE DAYS ARE LONG BUT THE YEARS ARE SHORT
I didn’t say this, but since I heard it I tell everyone. Because I wish someone had told me!
Because we kind of all journey through life the way kids journey to the coast, always asking “Are we there yet”. In Highschool we just want to finnish and be a grownup, at Varsity we just want a real job and be independent, when we start out work we just want to reach the top and earn money and success, when we are dating we just want to get married, when we get married we just want to have kids, and then when we have kids and the shole adulting and parenting thing is suddenly very real and very scary and if we are honest, something that we would sometimes very much like to run away from! we’re like, oh my word this is so not fun! And we look longingly at older couples with older kids sitting placidly at restaurants enjoying a quiet meal (while our toddler picks gum up off the floor under the table and we are wondering if there is a changing station in the restrooms!) and we ask ourselves, when is this going to be over?
But now that my boys are 9 and 11, I can’t help but wonder, did I make the most of that time, those tough, early years? DID I see it as a shaping, refining, satisfying blessing God intends it to be or was I just white-knuckling it to get it over with!
Embrace the discipline of the moment instead of the distraction of your iPhone. God has given our children to us so we can teach them, but I have learned more and more, that He has also given them to us to teach us!
Embrace the mundane of the menial so you can find it’s meaning. Because wisdom is a treasure
Be present with your kids so you can make Christ present with them, because in every circumstance we are His witnesses, testifying to our kids what it means to follow Him in every circumstance.
Running on empty – that is how I sometimes feel as a mom. I get to the end of the day and feel like I have nothing left, like in every area, with every offering, I am lacking. Ok, so be honest, sometimes I also feel like that at the beginning of the day. Like my only hope is to just try harder, like trying harder is my slogan, my motto, my anchor. Like I am starting off from a place of lack. But that’s a lie. According to the God’s word, I have a promise not of lack, but of abundance! A promise that says I will be equipped for the Godly work of mothering with more than what I need, “that He is able to make every grace overflow, abound to us, so that in every way – always having everything we need – we can excel in excel in every good work” (2 Cor 9 v 8)
And is that not what we are busy with as moms? The good word, the work of raising the next generation of Christ followers (please
Lord!), the work of raising someones’ future husband or wife! It is the abundance for thís that Paul employs the Greek word Perisseuo for, to describe just how much grace we will receive – grace in excess, beyond average, to surpass/ overflow/ have leftover! And with every sunrise, it’s new, there’s more! Yes, please!
Make extravagant grace your slogan Momma, your motto, your anchor! I am praying for you!
