how i do it.

About a year ago I read a post on a blog I frequented, called “Taking Care of Me.”  If you click on the link and are not a wife or a mother, don’t be put off.  I think the post relates to everyone.  The author talks about learning to organize her time in order to find things that “revive her spirits,” which for her, as a busy working mom of two, is “essential to survival.”

That post made an impression on me, and got me to thinking and talking to David.

I hesitate to write about this.  Because in doing so, the last thing I want is for you to feel guilty for not making certain decisions I have made.  It’s like anything we become passionate about . . . organic food or cloth-diapering or natural births . . . how do we find ways to express our beliefs without making everyone around us feel bad? 

I have a few friends who do this really well, and I want to learn from them.  Also, the older I get, the more I learn how many things in life just aren’t black or white.  I find it very comforting that we all have space to be different.

Having said that, several friends are saying to me, wistfully, “How can you be a mom of toddlers and read so many books?”  Or “How on earth do you blog every day?”

So I want to tell you how I do it. 

Part of it is due to that blog post, which got into my head.  Part of it is due to a husband who pushes me (sometimes more than I am comfortable with).  Part of it is due to learning that being a good mom isn’t about spending every waking moment with my kids; it is also about learning to take care of myself, to stretch and grow as my own separate person, so that I can bring all of that into motherhood.

In our own conversations, David and I tend to use the word, “energize,” in place of “revive your spirits.”  As in, “What energizes you?  Who energizes you?”  You could also say it this way: “What fills your tank?”

Asking that question regularly – and learning to find the answers to it – has, I believe, been one of the things God has used to help our marriage and family survive three incredibly stressful years in a row. 

Mostly it is the simple challenge of reminding myself:  I do have time to do things that make me happy.  Everyone has time.  What are things I can cut out of my schedule to give myself those pockets of time?”

So here are two things I love to do – hobbies, if you will, or things that “energize me” – reading and writing.  This year has been a (slow) process of dropping things that don’t really energize me and replacing them with things like reading and writing.

Two things I’ve dropped: television and Facebook.  I have done this slowly, in bits and pieces.

Now, TV is a non-option for us here in India, and movies have to be rented and downloaded several hours in advance from iTunes.  But the Internet will always be a temptation.  It is so much easier to end the day, worn out through and through, and plop on the couch with my laptop and surf the Internet.  To think, I’ve raced around after kids all day, I deserve to sit and do nothing this evening.

But David has kept after me to find time for something better than “doing nothing,” to find time for the things I really love.

And that’s what has made the difference.  It’s not that I’m giving up movies or Facebook just for the sake of doing it.  It’s giving them up to do something I enjoy more.

I love, love, love to read.  I can’t really describe it.  It is a hunger in my heart and I’m rarely so happy as when I have my head buried in a book that thrills me to my core (even if I’ve read it five times), ruler and pencil by my side to underline and scribble notes. 

Thanks to a birthday gift, I have discovered the intoxicating world of Annie Dillard, and I’m not sure I will ever try to write a thing again.  She’s said it all.  In ways I never knew a person could think to say it.  She’s a genius.  Just thinking about Annie Dillard throughout the day, recalling particular phrases and paragraphs from An American Childhood, puts a goofy smile on my face.  In short, it fills my tank.

And writing.  I love to write.  My great-uncle Dave, a lifetime writer and editor, told me when I was a child, “If you want to be a writer, you have to write every single day.  It doesn’t have to be much, just do it.”  I started my first pink hard-cover lined journal when I was twelve years old, and – though my journaling seasons have waxed and waned over the years – have never looked back.

Last summer, David bought a refurbished Macbook Pro, because he knows I love to write.  I began keeping my journals in a Word document – titled, very creatively, “September,” “October,” “November,” etc – almost daily seeking out my blue-plastic-covered laptop to pound out my thoughts and anxieties and dreams.  Not because I have to.  Because I want to.

David takes pictures and I upload them to my computer and blog them.  Most of our writing posts are just tweaked journal entries.  I love the process of chronicling our family story and widening people’s world with South Asia pictures and connecting with the ones I know and love, and the ones I don’t know and love.

So it is for the love of these hobbies that I stopped doing the other things.

Here’s the mystery: why is it so hard for me to give up the time-wasters for the things that really give me joy?   By “time wasters,” I’m not talking about having a favorite TV show or using Facebook to stay in touch with friends.   I think they can both be energizing.  I’m talking about the hours of channel surfing and looking at photo albums of high school friends I have not spoken to for ten years.

Now with some of the distractions gone, even in this third-world country with patchy Internet and no Blockbuster, believe me, I find other mindless things to fill in the gaps. 

That’s what I meant when I said I have a husband who pushes me.  From time to time, he looks up when I’m on the computer and asks me, “What are you doing?”  And by that he means, “If you’re on the Internet to write an email or read a friend’s blog, great.  If you’re into your second hour surfing knitting blogs – when you don’t even like to knit – maybe you should close the laptop and pick up a book.” 

He doesn’t say it because he’s mean-spirited.  He says it because I’ve asked him to.  I’ve pleaded with him to keep me accountable to do things that make me happy so that I’ll have more inspiration and energy to play with my kids and cook dinner and fold laundry.  He knows the difference between energized, tank-filled me, and irritable, snappy me.

He knows I’m an introvert, so he gives me a block of time every week, to take a bag-full of books and my Bible and laptop to a coffee shop and spend several hours sipping lattes and reveling in the freedom of sitting and gazing at traffic and not having to talk to anyone.

And when I have the space to be alone, I am somehow more excited to invite people over for dinner or read books to Judah or babysit for a teammate.

So, that’s me.  That’s “how I do it,” if you will.  I just heard from two different friends who have started running half-marathons, and I am so proud of them for carving out this kind of space into their busy lives to do something that fills them with delight.  They inspire me to look for other pockets of time to do more things I love . . . going to the gym, baking bread, hand-writing letters.

What are the things that fill your tank?