Balanced Challenge Day Eleven: Refresh

"Balance isn't the ultimate goal- knowing God is."

I so appreciate the spiritual focus in this book and how it encourages us to trust God and lean on Him. I find that my life is most balanced when my spiritual needs are met first, then everything else falls into place (whether it gets done that day or not).

In the last chapter of Balanced, Tricia gives several ideas for scheduling your work in order to be able to give a full effort at what you are focused on in the moment, instead of giving half-efforts at your different roles. The second list of ideas she shares is ways to clear out your inner clutter- the worries and concerns. the last list is 24 final tips, which are so helpful to me.

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

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Balanced Challenge Day Ten: Eight Life Themes

This is one of my favorite chapters in the book. Tricia encourages us to list the eight themes that take top priority during this season in life (they are subject to change), and choose to say yes to those things while choosing to say no to the things not on that list. (Saying no can be challenging!)

"In Balanced I encourage readers to narrow down their “life themes” to eight. Why eight? None of us are just about one thing . . . and eight is enough to manage, believe me!"

"Eight life themes are the things that come from the core of us. Yet during different seasons of life they may look different."

Here are my Eight!

1. Relationship with God
2. Wife
3. Mother
4. Healthy home

5. Daycare Provider
6. Serving in Church
7. Photographer
8. Reading/Blogging


This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

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Balanced Challenge Day Nine: Inspiration and Relaxation

Give your mind a rest and a dose of good, old-fashioned inspiration. Carve out some time today to implement one of my tips about finding inspiration and enjoy the feeling of creativity. 

1. Spend time with God, praying for God’s inspiration.
2. Do something to feed your creative soul.
3. Let the creativity spill out through words, through music, through art.
4. Share your message (God’s message through you) with others.

Something that I have let go of over the years of becoming a busy mom is recording our family history through scrapbooking our photographs. One of my new year's resolutions is to begin scrapbooking on a weekly basis with my older daughter. So I pulled out some envelopes of school and soccer pictures, hauled out the stacks of decorative paper, and we matched up what papers would look best with the pictures. that's as far as we got, so next time we'll plan the layout and embellishments and get it all glued down. I expect (and hope!) that as we get into the groove my creative juices will flow faster...

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

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Balanced Challenge Day Eight: Make Today Amazing

Taking a moment to tell my daughter how special she is helped me realize what a precious trust God has given me in raising my children in love and righteousness. She is such a blessing and brings us so much joy- how important it is that she knows that and can see it reflected in my words and action.

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

 
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Balanced Challenge Day Seven - Teamwork

"Many hands make light work—and moms, you shouldn’t feel the need to do everything yourself. Schedule a quick family meeting today to talk to your kids and spouse about the responsibilities you all can share to make your load a bit lighter."

I remember when my daughter loved to "help" sort and fold laundry, simply because we could do it together and it made her feel like a big girl. Now at age seven, she's learning just how much laundry mom folds on laundry days and how much of it is hers :) She's rising to the challenge though, and I'm so proud of her. I've discovered when there's the promise of a snack (especially a pickle) at the other end of the chore she perks up and moves more quickly.

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

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Balanced Challenge Day Six - Do What You Can

"Do you have an extra fifteen minutes before you need to hop in the car to pick up your kids? Make the most of them! Do a little laundry, organize a stack of papers, do a quick sweep of the kitchen. Those five, ten, and fifteen minutes add up throughout the day!"

At the end of a busy day I usually look back and wonder how productive I really was. Even when I manage to use my spare time to catch up on the small stuff, it's not always noticeable when I look around the house- probably because things are where they belong and I tend to notice the mess, not lack thereof :) Having a working checklist of things to get done helps me remember when I do have some spare minutes what some options are for spending my time.

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

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Balanced Challenge Day Five- Rank those Priorities

In chapter five, Tricia talks about first forming your calendar with the things of highest importance, then filling the spaces with the rest that needs to get done. Otherwise, what is urgent will always come before what is important.

This reminds me of an analogy on time management- You have a jar that represents your day. Some rocks represent the most important things, pebbles- less important, sand- trivialities. If you start by putting in the biggest rocks, you can add in the pebbles and then the sand that will fit in around the larger rocks. However if you start with the smaller less important things first, not everything will fit into the jar.

Some things I would like to form my calendar with before I fill it are family dinner each night, family home evening on Monday nights, and scripture reading and prayer with my older daughter in the morning before school.

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!
 
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Balanced Challenge Day Four- Believing God

What have you been called by God to do? Take a few minutes away from work and family to sit with your Bible and talk to God. Believe that God placed your dreams and passions in your heart. Find a verse that speaks to you about this, and post it today on your blog.

While I love creating art, photography and crafting, at this time in my life I'm focusing more on the children in my life. I have two perfectly wonderful daughters that joined our family through adoption, and also provide daycare for two fun little boys. The steady additional income has been a blessing for our family, and it feels good to know that I'm helping their mothers in their callings as middle school teachers. They are entrusting me with their child- I don't take that lightly. It's my responsibility to provide their sons with a loving, nurturing, and stimulating environment during the hours they are away from their mother. These are a few of the first pictures I remember as a young child depicting Jesus and his love for children.

 

Mark 10:13-16

13 And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.

 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

 15 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

 16 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

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Balanced Challenge Day Three - Get Your Kids Involved

How can you get your kids involved in what you’re working on? How can they experience what your job is like and contribute to it?

By providing day care for infants in our home, our seven year old daughter has become accustomed to having babies around and being a helper. She has grown in being willing to share my attention, learned how to safely play with babies, and enjoys the many joyful firsts that happen in that first year of life. A wonderful blessing is that it really prepared her to be a big sister when we adopted our second daughter! Some of her responsibilities are helping hold the bottle during feeding, throwing away the diaper after I change it, and folding and putting away her own laundry. Even though my attention is often divided, I feel like our relationship is stronger for working together and showing trust in her abilities.

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

Download the e-book for only $2.99 at Amazon

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Balanced Challenge Day Two: Make working from home work

Question: What can you do or change to make working from home actually work for you? Creating an office space? Cleaning up that office space? Looking into finding a babysitter for a few hours a day? Take the first steps in making the change, then take a photo of your progress and post it on your blog.

This was an easy one for me- the hardest thing about providing daycare for two infants is that I never find time to get my dishes done. I've been hand washing them for four years now. The pile would often get out of control and several hours of my free time were spent catching up. It got to the point where I hated making dinner because it meant I would have more pots and pans to wash. We even lived off paper plates for several months during the summer!

My husband is the sweetest, most thoughtful guy, and loves to surprise me. Often when we go on dates he won't tell me what the plan is, just for the element of surprise. Well, this Christmas he asked my sister to invite me over for the day so he and our bishop from church (who is a general contractor) could install the dishwasher he ordered. When I came home, he asked me if I knew where the popcorn popper was (to get me to look in the cupboards that the dishwasher replaced). I was so shocked. A dishwasher?! We had tossed the idea around for a couple years, but I would always fall back on how much money we were saving by hand washing. Let me tell you, it has been worth every penny! My stress level has dramatically decreased, I can clean up after a meal and have sparkling dishes while I "chillax" and read a book with my daughter or watch a tv show with my husband. I no longer have that mountain of dirty dishes hanging over my head so I can focus my best efforts at caring for my munchkins.

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

Download the e-book for only $2.99 at Amazon

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Balanced Challenge Day One: Family Priorities

I'm currently reading Balanced: Finding Center as a Work-at-Home Mom by Tricia Goyer and will be participating in the blog tour when I review the book. In the meantime, I'm taking part in her Balanced eleven-day challenge! 

Family Priorities (Chapter One)
Determine what your priorities as a family are. Ask yourself a few questions: What do we want to achieve as a family? What will matter five years from now—ten years from now? What will mold our children into God-serving adults? What will bring peace—not stress—to our home?

In ten years our oldest daughter will be seventeen! It's hard to comprehend that fact. Of course the first thing I think is that I want to be in our own house by then :) I know we'd love to adopt another couple of children in that time. My husband will be continuing with his teaching career, perhaps moving into administration. I imagine that as we add more children to our family I'll phase out the infant daycare, but I'm sure I'll still be photographing families on the side.

Our spiritual goals for our family are based on consistent family dinners and weekly family home evening lessons together, as well as daily scripture study and involvement in our church, especially through service. These are the years that are so dynamic and exciting, and making sure the most important things are top priority will help provide a solid foundation for our children and shape our family.

This post is part of the Balanced challenge with Tricia Goyer—and you can join, too!

Download the e-book at Amazon for only $2.99 

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Review: The Promise Box by Tricia Goyer

My rating: 4 stars

Synopsis from Goodreads.com

Every year, young Amish men descend on the cozy little town of West Kootenai, Montana, arriving in the spring to live there for six months and receive “resident” status for the hunting season in the fall. They arrive as bachelors, but go home with brides!
In The Promise Box, the second book of best-selling author Tricia Goyer’s Seven Brides for Seven Bachelors series, Lydia Wyse, a book editor from Seattle who grew up Amish, returns to the small community of West Kootenai to give comfort to her father after her mother’s death. She is drawn back to the familiar Amish ways after finding her mother’s most precious possession, a Promise Box of prayers and scripture. What her publisher sees, though, is an opportunity for a sensational “tell-all” book about the Amish.
Lydia soon finds herself falling in love with Amish bachelor Gideon Hooley. She wants nothing more than to forget her past and look forward to a future as an Amish bride. But will the pain of her childhood---and her potential betrayal of her community---keep her from committing her whole heart?

My Review

This book was so much more than a sweet Amish romance. The powerful themes of grief, remorse, faith, adoption, unconditional love of a parent, and community brought a depth of emotion to the story. As one who doesn't enjoy being brought down by heavy themes, I'm appreciative that there was an underlying message of hope and promise throughout.

(ARC provided via Netgalley for unbiased review)