Dana’s Avenue

Recently I read about scheduling on this blog:  http://homemakerslibrary.blogspot.com/.  She attests that scheduling moves you to focus on your life’s purpose.  Really?  Well I’ve never thought of it that way and read through her posts on the subject finally “getting it”.

I’ll go over what I took from her blog.  You can visit her to see the details.

Step 1 is to prayerfully establish your Life’s Purpose.  Here’s the rough sketch of what I have so far:

A) Know and love God

B) Love, Respect, Support, and Submit to my husband

C) Raise Asher to be a responsible man who loves the Lord

D) Teach Asher

E) Keep a nice home

F) Feed family healthy meals

She suggests that if you spend your time on things outside of your purpose then you are - eek - wasting time.  I don’t think that means we never rest or do anything for relaxation because then we’d burn out and wouldn’t be able to do anything at all so I’m not advocating a workaholic program for myself by any stretch of the imagination.

Today as I was determining what I needed to accomplish I thought, “I need to get back into my Bible reading plan.”  I realized that if my main purpose in life is to get to know and love God then I would make reading the Bible and praying more of a priority than I do.  That really put things into perspective for me.  Of course, it’s hard to do certain things when you have a baby but I’ve read many novels lately so I know I can read my Bible too (although, yes, it does take a different form of concentration).

So back to the schedule.

Step 2 is to go “room-by-room” making a list of everything that needs to get done in that room.  I did that today.  I can tell you I’m a bit overwhelmed but I keep thinking, “This is a long-term AND short-term list.”  I want to organize the pantry.  One day.  I want to fold and put away the laundry.  Today.  It’s just about a bit of prioritizing.

Step 3 is to go “person-by-person” but she hasn’t posted the details of that yet so I’m just getting to this point and thinking ahead only a bit.

For me, I have to be alive to fulfill my life’s purpose so I am making sure I take care of myself - physically, emotionally, spiritually.  Then, as I understand it, everything else comes under something within my “mission statement”.  So far (and by so far this has been a whole 3 hours or something) it gives me a sense of structure and focus and direction.

But where does ministry fit into this?  Right now supporting my husband, enabling him to do what he has been called to do, is my portion of our ministry.  I support him through conversation, encouragement, prayer, communication with supporters, and…  as I’ve now defined this as part of my purpose in life I will probably be more intentional in this and all the other areas as well.

Okay I know I’ve rambled a bit through this.  As I continue to figure this out, I’ll keep you posted…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.