A New Year's Resolution: Living life Unscheduled

Good morning!  (well it is here anyway)  I have spent the last weeks writing and rewriting posts for this blog and then not being satisfied with them they almost always end up in the trash.  My last attempt was just a "year in review" post and my finger might still make it to the publish button on that one.  Why do I keep scrapping posts?  Well it has a lot to do with Blogging Intentionally but it also has to do with my scattered brain.

Christmas.. well actually all the holidays even going back to Thanksgiving, tends to be my favorite season.  I love to give gifts, love to craft, love to cook, and for the most part love all the social activities that come along with the holidays.  I know that I run on pure adrenaline and caffeine for weeks on end just to maintain my sanity.  This year I started the season with a nice detox cleanse which I will credit with the fact that I stayed fairly healthy for the entire holiday season in spite of my children catching colds, stomach bugs, and the like.  The good health did nothing to help my brain focus though.  I couldn't pull together a complete thought for the life of me.

At some point I was talking with someone who said they were feeling holiday stress, or pressure for lack of a better word.  It's not a negative stress, but it's a self-imposed pressure that we put on ourselves to get all the stuff we want to finish, well.. finished!  She reminded herself (and me as well) that there's no point in stressing over it because we've done this a million times and eventually God takes over and everything gets done that needs to be done.  We just need ed to stop trying to do it all.

She was right.  I know that as soon as I stopped trying to get stuff done, things were done.  I really wanted to make some pillows for gifts this year.  It wasn't something that I would stress over, and it wasn't a necessity in celebrating Christ's birthday for me to finish these gifts.  It was, however, my heart's desire.  A week before Christmas they still weren't complete.  And by complete, I mean I hadn't started them at all.  I told myself that I would wait and if I was blessed with the time to sit and make them then I would be grateful.  And if not then I would be giving the recipients fudge for Christmas instead.  I wasn't going to TRY to make time for them.  I was just going to wait until the time arrived. 

Guess what?  About 3 days before Christmas I was able to sit down on a quiet late night and sew all five pillows.  And they turned out better than any gift I've made in the past ten years.  (So good that I almost kept one of them for myself, lol!!) 

I could go on with other examples, but the main point here is that I find myself "TRYING" too much.  Trying to get something done.  Trying to make time for something.  Trying to relax.  Trying to check off things on a to-do list.  Trying to stick to a schedule.

Well in 2012 I'm giving it all up.  I'm not going to try to accomplish everything.  I'm going to live with purpose and I'm not going just lay around giving up on life.. but I'm not going to strive for certain things.  It's my goal to wake up every morning with a mental list still, but it will be a list of possibilities not of obligation.  Then as the day goes on, with each hour I'm given it will be more like a "Look guys!  We finished math early so we can do art class now!" to the kids, or "Hey, I have a free hour, I can bake cookies for Michael to take to work!"... or read a book... or call a friend... or do the dishes.. (and because of THIS I'll still sound excited over the dishes :-) )  I'm going to summarize the day by being happy with what I accomplished, not looking at a schedule that I wasn't able to keep.  I'm going to make a "Look what we did today list" rather than make a "Things we won't actually get done to-do list".  Call it a glass half full attitude.

I know that some of you function best with a scheduled to-do list.  Some of my best friends do.  Guess what?  I don't.  I've tried for years and at the end of the day when I see that half-finished list I feel half-successful.  Why would I try, no better yet, why would I strive to put myself in that over-achieving mold?  Why can't I count each hour as it comes and fill it with something that needs to be done, or fill it with something that is just nothing but pure blessing and joy rather than having to rush through something at 2:00 so that I can then in turn be cranky about something I have to do at 2:45? 

I understand that some times certain things take priority, but if I'm realistic with myself then I'll remember that at the end of my life I will not reflect upon how many things were accomplished on my daily to-do list.  And if the end of my life were to come tomorrow I would hate for my kids to grow up remembering that Mom was stressed out the day before she died because she was trying to do the dirty dishes piling up and trying to declutter in the living room.  I would hope that they would remember me sitting down within the pile of books they dumped off the bookshelf and reading them a story because that's what I chose to fill the next half hour with rather than move on to the next thing on a list. 

Lists are great.  To help me remember stuff.  But they are bad at making me feel like I'm not meeting my own expectations of what I should be trying to get done.  My new lists are going to be short and sweet.  I will not assume that because many are motivated by organized schedules, I need to put myself under time constraints while life goes on without me.  I will have a short list of necessities: (appointments, etc) and then I'll keep going with my as-needed routines but then I'll have a second "list".. a mental list of all the things that are exciting possibilities.  Projects that we can do for school.  Rooms that could be arranged or re-organized.  A cuddle on a couch.  A fort built in the livingroom.  A book that could be read.  A friend that could be visited.  I won't rush through one to get to the next.  And if there is no next I will never count it as a wasted day because whatever that first thing was must have been pretty awesome if I was able to spend the whole day doing it.  I will not be stressed over meeting or not meeting a scheduled routine.  Life is too short for that.  Trying to meet self-imposed deadlines for life is silly.

I can't tell you how many times I've looked at my list at the end of the day and felt like a failure.  Or how often I've told a friend "well I've been trying to get this done, it's on my schedule every day"... but then life happens and the next thing on the list arrives and I have to leave it undone or half done.  Well maybe that's because I was prioritizing something when in truth I should have just laid it in God's lap and let him rank it's priority. 

I will not waste any more time Trying to get stuff done when I think it should be done.. because if I just give it all to Him and stop trying He'll bless each hour with what really should be done. 

It's sort of like living life as if you're on a perpetual vacation.  I don't know about you but when I'm on vacation, I take care of my basic requirements.. and then fill in the rest of the days with sunshine, fellowship and fun.. knowing that my days at the beach are limited.  And then when it's over I find myself in awe of all the ways I've been blessed by it. 

Christmas was excellent for me.  Huge things were accomplished.  But not because I tried to get stuff done, or not because my calendar/dayplanner told me it was time to do them.  Because I stopped trying to schedule life and just waited for God to show me the hour to do things.  And the few things that weren't accomplished?  Meh.  The world didn't end without them being done.  Guess what?  I think God knew that it wouldn't.