Steps to Routine

A lot of days I feel entirely unprepared to be an adult. I am not great at keeping the house clean or tidy. I am awful at organizing and getting rid of things. Then to boot, I am also pretty bad at establishing routine and the habits that would help me be a functioning adult. Add two kids and multiple home based businesses and it leads to chaos.

Then my sister casually mentioned she was going to start a bullet journal. I looked it up and found this post. It is long, but incredibly informative. And I have taken the plunge. I found a notebook and decided I was going to give it a try.

I am a week in, so this is hopeful, but it is helping. I am better able to track everything like when I last did laundry, to how long a knitting order is taking me. Honestly it is keeping me accountable to myself. I am the one who notices that the item on my list for the day went unfinished, or that Monday's list was too ambitious.

I am enjoying my bullet journal so much more than a typical planner because I can decide how big each day is, and stick in a new collection of the children's books I am hoping to find second hand, without causing a massive disruption to the system. It is systematic yet flexible for my slightly scatter-brained self.

It is nice to feel slightly more equipped for the stage of life I am in, and to push myself to grow.  If you give it a try, have fun!

The Course of a Day

Staying home with my kids is different than I expected. What I expected was a vague thing: crafts, stories, outside play and a clean house.

Instead, I continue to struggle with chaos. My 3 year old hates crafts. Our books spend most of their time on the floor where the 1 year old put them.

So I am learning to celebrate small victories. My cautious 3 year old dressed himself with very specific coaching and ten full minutes of our morning. My 1 year old is singing a song while holding a pillow like a cello because he has seen people play instruments.

Daily life will likely not be what I want it to be, but I will try to celebrate what I can.

Gratitude

Despite this season having been dark, it has inspired incredible gratitude.

Grocery gift cards slipped into pockets.

Notes of encouragement.

Hugs.

Chocolate cupcakes baked for a birthday celebration that I could eat.

A temporary job that helped pay some bills.

Hubby getting a job with benefits.

Friends who love our kids.

Christmas gifts we finally used consisting of a gift card and free babysitting so we could have a date. (I recommend this as a gift to parents very highly.)

And today, a stranger to me, but someone who knows my husband through work bought flowers for me and dropped them in his shopping cart at the grocery store.

Big things and little things, and I am grateful to those who know us and love us selflessly.

Blog Silence

The blog has been silent for a little while. Some things are just too difficult to write about, some days too hard to put words to. There were a few drafts I have since deleted because they are such imperfect pictures and fail to capture the emotions and thoughts that were going through my head.

We have been dealing with the loss of my husband's job and the fallout from that. I don't really mean the financial aspects of it, but the emotional, mental and spiritual fallout.

Since my husband has been off, I have dealt with some of the darkest days of depression I have faced in a long time.

When my depression flares, my faith falters massively. I am exhausted, simultaneously numb to emotions and overwhelmed by them. There are so many contributing factors I could talk about: being a mom to two kids under age 3, spring weather in Nova Scotia, the effects of introversion and constantly having an adult in my space all the time, you get the idea. But it comes down to what our pastor spoke about in his sermon today and over the past weeks of this series on Mark. Christians will suffer. We lack faith and need to repent of it.

I. I lack faith. I struggle to believe that God is sovereign and more powerful than depression. I fail to believe that God will provide for us in this time. So this is where I am. I am repenting day by day of my lack of faith and asking God to help my unbelief. I am also being lovingly reminded that this life involves suffering and I need to not be paralyzed by it, but trust God with it.

I waited patiently for the Lord;
    he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
    out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
Psalm 40:1-2 (ESV)

Sickness

We have had about a month of sickness in our house. Revolving colds and now a random fever-causing virus for the little ones.

It has been an exhausting time. Sick kids do not sleep well or eat well. They get cranky, and I get cranky from the sleep deprivation and my own sickness. I have missed several weeks of church, playdates and the like.

But. It has been a time to grow. It has encouraged me to practice patience and extend grace to my kids. I am not naturally good at those things and it has been good for me. It has strengthened my faith that God will provide, as I have been too tired to stress about it. It has given me time to reflect, pray and grow.

As I sit here waiting for their daddy to get home from church, I am thankful that he could still go and that our kids were able to get the rest they needed. I may also be reminding myself by writing this that there are things to be thankful for in the midst of winter illness.

New Year's Resolutions in February

Why am I writing about my New Year's resolutions in February? Well, simply because I have been thinking about the ones I made when it became 2016. I've almost gotten used to writing 2016 even!

Some of my goals for this year were:
-Declutter our house, donating and selling unwanted and unnecessary items
-Introduce a weekly schedule including cleaning and social times
-Write more
-Do more creative/artistic activities with Micah
-and more.

It was and is an ambitious list. How am I doing?

Well, I gave up on the decluttering challenge I was doing. It was the wrong pace for our lives, so instead I am taking it a bit more slowly and working it into our lifestyle rather than a clump of 90 days. It has been getting better, and hopefully soon we will take some of the items to places they can be donated, as they are mostly accumulating in our den.

The weekly schedule is getting there. I started a meetup of moms at the local play place and have actually introduced myself too several of them! We haven't gotten as far with the weekly cleaning schedule because we are working to overhaul the organization of our house. Right now it looks like the basics getting done, then Saturdays involve tackling the big tasks, and eventually it will be more feasible to work it in.

I am writing more! I started the blog back up (after deleting embarrassing posts from the past); I write more frequently in my journal, and am making them habits.

Crafts and creative projects with Micah have been a struggle. He is a stubborn kid at times, and has been resistant to change. But, he has started finding the joy in painting and gluing. He is mostly using his chalkboard that he got for Christmas, and that's ok! He likes drawing dinosaurs, globes and circles. If you can tell them apart, I applaud you.

It is hard to see the progress in the midst of the chaos of daily life. Our house is chaotic even still, I struggle against structure even when I know it is important and beneficial. I find February hard, with the unpredictable weather and spring still a month away. So, I am glad that I took time to assess some of the progress we have made here. I am struggling with seeing God's grace in my weakness, but his grace reminds me that these small daily changes I am making are significant if I am giving him glory and that is an encouraging thing. 

Fear

Fear is something I am all too familiar with and I know I am far from alone.

Sunday the sermon discussed fear and it got me thinking. What is the opposite of fear?

We are often quick to declare bravery! Courage! Confidence!

What about peace?

What if the opposite of fear is peace? Not facing everything boldly, or standing firm against the onslaught of worry, but knowing peace?

I find something wonderful in that thought, and it definitely is a lot quieter since I realized this.

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." - John 14:27 (ESV)

Prayer Project

This winter I decided to start a prayer project. I want to work prayer into daily life more than I have in the past, so a dedicated project was a good way to start. As a knitter a baby blanket seemed like a good starting point.

One month into the new year and it is complete! I found myself praying for the small family receiving the blanket, our church, friends and our family. It was good for me to have an excuse to spend time with God.

I have too often neglected my prayer life, so this was a welcome opportunity to build new habits. How do you carve out time for prayer in your life?

Creating an Organized Life

I am a disorganized person. My house is not organized; our schedule is almost non-existent. Our commitments and necessary activities have increased, creating more chaos. This year, and for several years I have been working towards becoming organized for our family's sake.

As someone who has struggled with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, social anxiety and depression, the struggle is significant. I have the tendency to give up easily because nothing will ever be perfect. Having kids, this tendency got worse: toddlers are well-known for their ability to undo everything that their parents have just done.

However, with a small business, a husband who works full time, two kids and a house that is frequently filled with guests, it is time. Time to let God's grace change my tendencies, my inability. It is doing just that. As a couple, my husband and I are figuring out what a baseline level of organization in our house looks like. My heart is no longer racing when I think of all that needs doing, and I am able to prioritize that certain rooms will be easier to get done first, and then we can move on to the more difficult ones.

Once we have a baseline for what rooms should look like it will be much easier to return them to that state. From there, we can create systems including a weekly cleaning schedule that makes sense for our family. Our kids can be involved in the process, and learn what a functional space is.

My heart is changing and our family is growing through grace. I think that is the most important aspect of getting organized: centering life around the amazing gift of grace God has given us.

Compromise

Writing this blog requires some compromise.

In order to sit in peace, I have to compromise with the toddler and split my screen so he can watch Netflix. It avoids a complete meltdown, killing my phone battery and means I can write something.

I am also compromising with myself. Trying to figure out what to write is a challenge, never mind allowing myself to write something that does not fulfill my perfectionist criteria.

As a mom, compromise happens. More often than I would maybe like, but it is good to learn. What things do you compromise on?

What am I doing here?

I wish I knew.

But maybe we can figure it out. My name is Sam. I am a married mama with two delightful boys. I am a Christian. I own a small business doing custom sewing and knitting. I also struggle with anxiety and depression. Life has been complicated, we have moved a lot. We are hopefully settled into small town Canada. But, who knows. Life has not been as easy as expected, but we are still here and I am still going, and maybe even starting to enjoy life a bit. Want to join me on this adventure? Follow as I get this blog going and work on figuring life out; figuring out what thoughts I hide behind.