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.