My Annual Knock On The Head

It happens to me every year. You would think that I'd be prepared, that I'd be ready to meet it at the door to say, "No thanks, I'm not interested" or, "You better get off my property before I SHOOT!". You might think that I'd remember the fatal outcomes, the damaged self esteem, the lost time, the neglected children. Yet, without fail, every year I put myself through the same torture, the same charade, the same silliness. What am I talking about, you ask? I'm talking about that recurring desire to DO IT ALL. And by all, I mean ALL. Yes folks, the mom who has a hard time keeping her floor swept and her laundry done was going to do it all, once again. I was not only going to continue being a full time SAHM-homeschooler, I was going to start an advice column, I was going to blog wonderful things everyday and make lots of money doing it, I was going to start a co-op, I was going to loose 15 pounds, I was going to exercise everyday and love it, I was going to find lots of ways to make money so I could buy my husband a house, I was going to write a book, I was going to write a line of homeschooling curriculum, I was going to totally landscape my yard, AND I was going to be able to all of this while sitting in my bathrobe, eating ice cream, and watching old black and white movies.

Use your imagination folks and I'm sure you can come close to the wreck I made of myself these past few months. I had moments of lucid reason, but most of the time I just sat around beating myself up for not being Wonder Woman. So, last week I decided to "HOLD EVERYTHING"! and just take it easy on myself. I took that time to re-examine the goals I had set for myself at the beginning of this year. I prayed, read my old journals, talked with my husband, talked with my kids. I had amazing epiphanies, heart felt revelations, and received all the answers I was asking for. I would call it a life changing, beautiful experience, if it weren't for the fact that I seem to go through this almost every year. How many times do I have to ask the Lord to hit me on the head to make me realize that my first priority, my first obligation, my first desire is to be a good mother and wife, to raise up a family that will please my Father in Heaven and prepare me for my eternal duties in the here-after?

Now, I am not saying that I shouldn't do more, but I should at least be performing my first duties well before I take on more (and, no, I'm not doing them well even by my standards and mine aren't all that high). So, once again I am nicely folding, stacking, and labeling all my crazy wild schemes and storing them in my "when the kids are older" closet and focusing on the tasks at hand, which are:
Homeschool well
Continue to rebuild my relationship with Cookie
Be frugal with our money (I used to be but I've been enjoying having money and I've lost that desire to "save, Save, SAVE!". I have always said that I can earn more by saving than by working in a part time job)
Keep my home in order
Exercise and be healthy AND happy

Once I feel that I am doing these jobs well (NOT perfect, just well) then I will open up that closet and pick a new task to take on. I will still blog and do my advice column (if people send in questions) but I won't do it unless all my other tasks are taken care of for the day and I happen to have some free relaxing time on my hands.

Maybe my goal for next year will be to not make too many new goals =)

Liz

Making Room For Real Growth

I don't have a green thumb, by any stretch of the imagination. I bring home stray plants that follow me home and I beg and plead and promise, "I'll water it everyday, I'll fertilize it, I'll re-pot it when it gets too big, I promise! Pleeeeease let me keep it". In about 5 weeks I have a brown twig sticking up out of a little pot of moldy mud. My main gardening fault is that I have no stomach for the butchery that is required. I plant my little row of carrot seeds and happily watch their little green shoots popping up from the ground. Then I read on the back of the seed packet that I'm supposed to "thin" them out (which means pulling up and killing more than half of my new little babies that I worked so hard to plant). I can never bring myself to pull those innocent little shoots that hold so much potential. I leave them there, hoping that the seed packet was just joking, and give them lots of water. After about a month I still have a pretty little row of green shoots, but they seem to have stopped growing. In reality I have actually prevented every single one of my precious green shoots from reaching their potential and might as well not have planted a single one to begin with. I also have the same issues with "pinching back". I started to buy the pre-grown tomato plants from Home Depot so I wouldn't have to suffer the death of young shoots. But the instruction card tells me that I must "pinch off several inches" from my beautiful plant. I look at my strong looking tomato plant and I reason to myself, I can't pinch it, what if I kill it? I'm sure the first wild tomato plant wasn't "pinched off" and it survived. So I allow my plant to grow without limits, I will not be responsible for holding this energetic plant back in life. It grows to amazing heights and I am proud that I broke the social mores of gardening. It grows, and grows, and yet there is only one tiny tomato on my behemoth bush, and it never turns red. Covering my face with my hands, I weep because what I thought was plant freedom was really just undirected and unused energy going to waste. So, after all the useless deaths, and wasted fertilizer, have I learned my lesson? I have been growing an avocado tree (you know, where you stick toothpicks in an avocado seed and stick it in water) and it is actually getting somewhere! I did research on how to grow them this time. Well, I got to the dreaded part of "pinching back" new growth... I put it off (it still makes me queasy, I know I'll never be a plant surgeon in this life), and put it off. Then, just a few days ago, I took a deep breath, placed my fingernails around the top of my lovely, fragile plant, gave a little moan of apology, and pinched. I almost feinted. Every day I have watched my plant, waiting for the amputation to cause gangrene and then the death of my little guy. To my amazement, my plant suddenly has leaves! It had grown "leaves" before but they were supper tiny and are just barely noticeable going up the stem, but the two tiny leaves under the amputation just started growing, and fast! I am starting to realize that some times we have to cut back in order to have the energy to really produce anything of real worth. I am starting to look at my own life and I am seeing many areas of my life that maybe need pinching back, or thinning out. Am I choking myself, or expending useless energy, when I could be producing valuable fruit? Well, watch out world, Lizzy has her gardening gloves on and a pair of pruning shears and she is ready to GROW!