“Don’t take the short view. Women tend to do that and feel despair over not being where they want to be. Be active instead of passively waiting for life to change. By ‘active’ I mean pursue God, pursue love, and pursue excellence. Figure out how God can use you now.” – Rebecca Price, “What Women Want”
Juggling the demands of our busy life can be exhausting and rightly so. Today women have more choices available to them than ever before. As moms the choices and demands are crowding out the true basic calling we are given for our lives.
Do you find yourself stressed out?
How about with an overloaded to-do list
At the end of the night are you too exhausted to fully be with your family?
Do it all role
There is a time and season for you to fulfill different roles. When we try to combine all those together at the same time, we start to feel overwhelmed, unsatisfied, anxious or even depressed.
Perhaps your role right now is to be a stay-at-home mom, learning to balance that role while also being a wife can be tricky. In order to be in the role as wife, you may have to put some other items lower on your list of priorities to make it all work.
When your children are older, the order may change – whatever season you are in will help you consider where your priorities fall – as long as you consider it!
You just cannot do it all, all the time without something suffering.
As hard as we try to meet the demands that we and others put on ourselves, we will not be truly satisfied until we examine a few areas of our lives. There is a way to put balance back in your life; surely something we all can benefit from examining.
Priorities
This is a big one. If you do not know what your priorities are you will continue to make decisions by the seat of your pants. Your days will be filled with regret, too much ‘to do’ and important people in your life feeling less than important. Consider how these things fit into your daily life now:
God
Your husband
Your home
Your children
Your job-if you work outside the home
Volunteering
Friendships
Self-care – YOU
Can you put these in some type of order of importance, or maybe you already have but a few have been left off that list.
What is God speaking into your heart?
If you need to re-order your list, I suggest you let God help you navigate it and let Him show you what His purpose is for you in this season of your life. Prayerfully consider these priorities and how they should be reflected in your life.
Making daily decisions based on those priorities is what will keep things in check.
Evaluate your pace of life
This is a critical piece to the puzzle, and examining it is often overlooked. So often many of us are running so fast we never purposefully think about the bigger picture – much less take positive actions steps to correct your course.
Does your family spend much time at home?
Are your children involved in more than one activity at a time?
Do you have time to connect with your husband?
These are all questions to consider and I am sure you can come up with even more.
Our society continues to place a sense of “normal” to the fast paced lifestyle so many of us lead.
I don’t know about you, but when I was younger I do not recall being gone 5 of the 7 days during the week and running through a drive thru for dinner nearly all of those nights. A stay-at-home mom is not meant to leave the house at 8 AM to take her kids to school and not return again until 6 or 7 PM. If this sounds a little like your week, it may be time to re-examine.
Just say NO
Now the hard part – or at least for most of us generous moms!
After you have taken the time to put your priorities in order you may need to ‘de-clutter’ your life to fit that new list. You have to learn to make decisions based on your list of priorities.
Everyday you are given opportunities to spend your time doing a multitude of things. If you allow decisions to be made without considering your priority list it will be easy to set yourself up for a melt-down. When you continually say YES without considering your priorities and how your “yes” will impact those, something will suffer. Often times it is those we are surrounded with on a daily basis – our family.
Do you find yourself grumpy for no apparent reason?
Can you find time to sit and play a game with your little one?
Does your husband have to lock you in the bathroom to have a conversation?
These are all little hints to let you know that you may not have enough “flexible” time in your day and that someone or something is certainly suffering from your choices of how you spend your time.
Nikki over at Take Control Organizing just ran a great article on The Power of Saying No, and I loved her “nice” and easy ways to say NO:
- Thank you for thinking of me, but at this time my schedule does not allow any extra activities.
- I am just not available right now, thank you anyway.
- No, Thank you! Plain and simple!
She also added, “If you need time to think about whether taking on a new project is a good idea, ask for the time.. Never feel pressured in making a decision right then and there! Take the time to think about it, talk with others, do whatever you need to do, to make the right decision for you!”
That last part is so true. When you take the time to truly evaluate how a “yes” will impact you and your family you will be less likely to make an error by quickly saying yes.
What helps you to remember to consider your priorities when making decisions?
