Sometime early this year I came to a humbling and painful realization about the way I spent my time.  It followed my major epiphany that no one was going to help me lose weight and make healthier choices but…ME.  It took months of trying to replace my daily sugar junking with better options to make a change.  I still cave but sugar doesn’t have the same hold.  Though I didn’t lose all the baby( x4) weight I was toting around, at least half of it is gone – better than nothing I figure.

The much harder conclusion was that no one else was responsible for the way I chose to use my time.  I would read Proverbs 31 and just dismiss the whole chapter, too long a list, too lofty.  Get up before the sun so my house could be in order?  Craziness.  Instead I woke up with my kids, gave generously of my time to the computer, read too many blogs/articles and continuously remained utterly behind on laundry, daily cleaning and a general sense of focus.  I told myself those were just part of the season (which truly, honestly they are sometimes).  In a few years maybe I could aim for change in that department.

Nevermind that my lack of time management was hard on everyone.  I would snap and ask Chris to do the dishes and list off the “100 things I did today” to explain why breakfast/lunch/dinner dishes all lined the sink and entire counter.  I would complain about the workload and refuse to put one more single piece of clothing away (this was less than smart, just landed me more work in the long run).  Sure, it might have been true, but the attitude behind it wasn’t winning any points.  It seemed reasonable to me that my kids wake up to me on the computer sipping coffee in my pajamas every morning.  It certainly isn’t something inherently bad.

There were two problems at hand for me though.  The first was that I was generally behind on all things ‘home’ partly because of all the people who live here and partly because I could not see that it was my job as the manager of this home to find a system that worked.  The second was that my time spent reflected my values.  Are my values shopping on Amazon and reading 10 blogs in a day?  Or are they pursuing a living, breathing relationship with my Creator?  I realize it’s not an either or type of thing.  But if my time was broken down into a pie chart – Amazon would win over Jesus.  And that was more than a bummer.  It just wouldn’t do.

How can I reflect something or someone I’m not giving (literally) the time of day to?  How can I read book after book but ignore THE Book and the richness of wisdom for all of life that is in it?  I recently told my mom, I feel a little sheepish about how much I’m learning actually reading the Bible.  There are so many answers and so much hope, I am continually amazed.

And I’ve known about God all my life.  But the shift from knowing about to just knowing is completely transformational.

It all comes down to choice.  Just like no one was going to make me choose a bowl of yogurt and fruit instead of half a box of cookies…no one is going to choose to manage my time and my (more than) full time responsibility of  keeping our home running, it is up to me how the pie chart turns out.  While it’s a life long work in progress, the fruit of a new understanding is radically altering the way our days play out around here.

Just ask my husband (grin).