Resolution Reality Check

Today we are already more than 5 weeks into our new year. How are your resolutions coming along?

Every year about this time, I do a resolution reality check. What is working? What isn't? What is getting in my way?

I want to use the same excuse each year: I don't have enough time. It's not true, of course, it's an excuse. Our true priorities do show in the way we use our time. What is true is this:

There are 168 hours in each week. I spend a modest 52 of those hours asleep How I spend the remaining 116 hours demonstrates what matters most to me. If you were sitting beside me right now, you would know that putting away the Christmas decorations did not make the list!

For this year's reality check, I sat down a made a list of the things I do each week that matter the absolute most to me. My list would look a lot different than yours, but I included 1.5 hours a day for cooking the healthy meals we all love, 6 hours a week for exercise and 7 hours a week for spiritual growth and blog writing. I included 4 hours a week for hubby and and an hour a day for the 5 kids in heart-to-heart time.  Everything else that is necessary was then included, such as laundry, bathing kids, driving people places, paperwork, computer work and so on. Then I added in a modest amount of service; only the things I am already doing that matter the most to me. When I added up only the essential (to me) things, I realized why some of my efforts have not succeeded. These things that are essential to our happy-home-happy-hearts maintenance take 162 hours a week.

The fact that I have only 6 "discretionary" hours a week came as quite a shock to me; more so when I looked at the very modest amount of time I allotted to actual housework and driving the kids around, both huge time drains.  Don't misunderstand. I'm not whining about it. Quite the opposite: I'm relieved. I was calling myself "lazy" and "a slacker" because I was finding it so challenging to keep my resolutions. In reality, I was just up against the clock and hadn't acknowledged it!

There is no immediate solution for me. I am not willing to give up the modest amount of service I perform at church and school, nor am I going to stop doing laundry! Since I can't manufacture more time in the week, the true "solution" is this: I will be aware of the actual limit on my time and choose carefully how I spend that 6 hour gift each week. You can bet it won't be watching Downton Abbey, unless ironing or exercising are also happening.

Now this is me. It's fair to assume that people with fewer than 5 children at home might fare a bit better, time-wise. Yet you might be astonished at how heavily committed you actually are!  Try this exercise if you find you are lacking resolve around your resolutions. And don't forget to include time for fun, relaxtion and re-fueling in your "important" list - take time for those people and activities that are life-giving to you. Let me know how you fare!

More on the Nature of Fire

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/869370

According to The Nature Conservancy, 
More than half of the terrestrial world, including almost all of North America, depends on the existence of fire to maintain healthy plants and animals and natural resources upon which people depend, such as clean water." 

Further, the National Park System says,   
Fires are a natural part of the Northern Rockies ecosystem [italics mine]. Fire promotes habitat diversity by removing the forest overstory, allowing different plant communities to become established, and preventing trees from becoming established in grassland. Fire makes minerals more available to plants by releasing these nutrients from wood and forest litter and by hastening the weathering of soil minerals.

This is simply amazing!  In general, we fear fire and do everything in our power to prevent it, which is reasonable.  Of course we are speaking here of actual fire, not the metaphorical kind I spoke of in "The Nature of Fire."  Yet there are certainly parallels, aren't there?

5 years ago yesterday, my best friend and sister-in-law, Sharon Parish, died.  She had a "cardiac accident" two weeks prior that had left her brain-dead and unresponsive.  This was the biggest "fire" of my life.  In the days I sat at her bedside, the cleansing fire raged through and removed all the trash and underbrush.  In the weeks and months following her death, that fire cleared off the over-story and mis-planted seedlings.  In the years since, the forest minerals have created a healthy ecosystem for what is new that is emerging in me. 

At times after her death, I fought "the fire" with all my might.  At times, I fed it.  In the end, the nature of fire prevailed and all that was not essential fell away and what remained was the true essence of who I am; I have re-prioritized my life to place my loved ones first.  I have recognized the value of pursuing my calling, something Sharon did very well. 

I have been reminded -- in the most graphic way -- that I am actually not in charge on this earth and I do not know how many more minutes or hours or days I have to make a difference in another's life or to tell my friends and family how much they matter to me.   I have a big and messy home but I always have time to read a story to my little ones. I have time for softball games and track meets.  I have time to foster parent.  I make time to exercise and sleep so I can have what I need to do it all again tomorrow.  I have time to call my parents and send thank you notes to my grade school teachers.   And if it turns out I have 50 years, I will be able to look back with satisfaction and know they were years well-lived.  This is the nature of fire.

"There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as though it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer