As you're stuck at home with your family, we want to provide encouragement for you. This is part one of a two-part series from one parent to another to encourage you to shift your perspective.
I don’t know about you, but I feel like I have forgotten how life is a constant series of choices. Somewhere in the last 15 years, I got involved in living life, one day after another, without thinking past the kids, and the dishes, and getting up the next day to do it again. Over the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to remember again what it means to make choices.
That sounds out of place in a moment in time where it feels like many of our choices are being made for us. Think of it this way: we have all just been handed a clean slate of sorts. Everything that we normally do, the people we are used to seeing every day, the events we are accustomed to going to—they have all been shifted in one way or another, if not completely stopped for a time.
We have a huge opportunity to take a minute, breathe, and reevaluate our lives, our schedules, and our everyday choices.
You're not alone in this.
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Stop and think about all of the little everyday choices we have forgotten to think about. Really take the time that you now have to think about what is important to you, or even what should be important to you. It starts by asking simple questions.
Questions to ask
It can be simple questions, like, do you like puzzles or games as a family? Or there might be bigger questions, like have relationships been falling through the cracks in the normal busyness of life? Have your kids been missing out on a real relationship with you due to crazy schedules? Are there parenting issues you can now address as you are forced to reckon with them all day long? Who are your real friends that will make the time to call and see how you are doing in the midst of a crisis? Are you one of those real friends to others? Do you really like all of the tuna fish that you stockpiled at the beginning of this, or will the 15 cans be donated at the end of all of this?
I had forgotten to ask some of those questions for myself. I tell my husband all the time that I wish life would just slow down so that I could stop and think for a few minutes and just breathe. Life with a family is busy and I don’t know about you, but I feel like it is also noisy! It is hard to take that needed time to sit down with your spouse and discuss schedules, let alone little Johnny’s struggle in reading!
Choose to see the blessings
We can choose to see this moment in time as a blessing in that small way—we have just been forced to slow down. What we choose to do with that time is up to us. We can panic and waste it, which while tempting, isn’t going to change anything, or we can sit down as families, and as spouses, and really take the time to discuss what needs to change in our lives, and what is actually working.
Allow this time to reflect inwardly at what drives you. Are you spinning out of control internally? Are you finding yourself making lists and staying up at night trying to figure out how you are going to take the right vitamins, stay away from the sick people, or kill all germs everywhere with your homemade hand sanitizer? Maybe instead, you can use this time to really dig deep and ask God where He fits into your heart and life right now.
We have a huge opportunity to take a minute, breathe, and reevaluate our lives, our schedules, and our everyday choices.
I know that when I am busy, I am not relying on God; I am instead relying on my color-coded calendar with sticky notes reminding me of all of the things I have to do. My dependence on God goes out the window because I don’t think I have the time, or my own thoughts on what I have to do have taken over all of the space in my head.
In all of this, I have gotten the chance to see how my reliance on myself has been cutting God out of my life. And for that new insight, I am grateful.
Want more? Check out part two of this series for a few simple steps you can take to make the most of this quieter, slower pace of life.
This post was written by Christina Davila, a Concordia alumna (2002, B.A. in English, minors in Education and Communication), mother of six, and a home educator.
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