what worked and what didn’t in 2018, part 1.

Hello there, my friends!

I hope you’ve recovered from the holidays and are settling into 2019, ready as I am to embrace the comfort of familiar rhythms and routines.

This post was a request from my husband and it gives me a chance to say: I love blog post requests!

I enjoy writing and sometimes run out of ideas, or think maybe you get bored of reading about the same old/same old, so if there’s anything you want me to write about, don’t ever hesitate to ask! I like a good assignment.

In lieu of making New Year’s Resolutions I typically take some time during the first couple weeks of January to reflect on what worked and what didn’t work for me in the previous year. If you’re curious, I wrote about it in 2015 here and 2016 here. And then I guess I skipped a year!

Doing this gives me a chance to feel encouraged about all that’s going well in my life, and helps me come up with a few goals for the New Year. And as an Enneagram 1, goals make me happy.

You guys. I’m a little long-winded, so I’ve decided to divide this post into two parts. I’m sorry!

Today you get Part 1: What worked in 2018.

 

 

What worked:

Wal-Mart grocery pick-up

I can’t say I ever imagined I’d be thanking Wal-Mart for allowing me to buy their groceries, but wonders never cease, do they?

When I was bemoaning the weekly Dreaded Grocery Shop, a couple of friends urged me to try Wal-Mart grocery pick-up, and so at the beginning of 2018, I did.

After a full calendar year of wildly vacillating between grocery stores: Wal-Mart, Aldi, Trader Joe’s Publix, I have to say that the Wal-Mart grocery pick-up works best for our family and our budget in this particular season of life.

Is it as cheap as Aldi? No. Is it as luxurious as Publix, where I feel like I’m waited on hand and foot? No. Is it as hip as Trader Joe’s? Um, decidedly no.

But as a homeschool mom/pastor’s wife with very full weeks, it’s quite simply a blessing to me.

I’ve traded the over-stimulation of wandering grocery store aisles and trying to make decisions, typically with several kids in tow, for the ease of ordering online in the comfort of my home, with my weekly meal plan and calendar — and my pantry! — in front of me. I like being able to order everything from printer paper to a shower curtain liner to organic quinoa in one fell swoop. I like driving just 12 minutes to my nearest Wal-Mart, and then driving right back home again.

Did you know that the stores have a separate entrance and parking lot for grocery pick-up? So you avoid all the Wal-Mart traffic. I like choosing my time slot for pick up (you have a whole hour to pick up), being able to “check in” on my Wal-Mart app as I leave the house so that they can follow my progress and have the groceries ready when I pull up. I like how pleasant the employees are who bring my groceries out to the van and load it for me.

No, Wal-Mart did not pay me to write this review!

My one complaint is when the store is out of the item I want. They show you the substitution they chose and if you don’t want it, they’ll take the item off your total. Typically the substitution is fine. But when I’m in a time crunch and have dinner planned and they didn’t have that one ingredient, it’s a bummer. But this could just as easily happen in another store.

I still end up stopping by Trader Joe’s at least once a month to stock up on a few of our favorite items (their gluten-free foods like bread, waffles, and oats, are the best and least expensive). And if I’m in the area, I’ll stop by Aldi. But on the whole Wal-Mart pick-up has been a game-changer for me this year.

 

 

Keeping margin in our schedule

We’re not playing any sports this year or doing any other extra-curriculars. We committed to homeschooling and to our two groups: Classical Conversations and our field trip/book club homeschool group.

I absolutely love it.

I do not feel stressed or rushed. Our weeks are busy with school and people, but it’s a good sort of busy, a sustainable busy. We eat dinner together as a family every night of the week.

We offered winter basketball to the kids and none were interested. David and I sometimes look at each other and ask, “What did we do wrong that our kids aren’t interested in team sports?”

It’s funny. David played all.the.sports as a kid but I’m decidedly un-athletic. Our kids are all four very active, but right now they prefer the trampoline and riding bikes and hiking and roaming their grandparents’ backyard for bugs. Sometimes they’ll throw the football with David or play basketball with their cousins. In the past I’ve worried about it (is this really good for them? are they missing a vital component of childhood?)

And don’t get me started on worrying whether they should be in some sort of music lessons.

But I decided to give up the worrying this fall. When I worry about what we aren’t doing, I can’t enjoy what we are doing.

I realize that this golden era will not last forever.  The kids will get older, become more independent with hobbies and classes and sports. I can’t stave off busyness forever. So for now, I’m reveling in these days of doing life together, participating in our homeschool communities, and serving our church.

I’m reveling in finding “enough” for our family.

Are we missing out on good things? Yes. And I am content.

 

 

Doing ministry with our kids

The older the kids get, the more we do ministry together as a family. It’s a natural part of our life.

Judah waters the indoor plants Sunday mornings during coffee hour and often helps clean up on the Sundays we take the Lord’s Supper. He and Amelie help me teach the kindergarten and first grade class at church. We have people in our home every week. Judah has been to the prison with David to visit a friend and we’ve eaten meals at the halfway house in our neighborhood.

It’s making a difference in our kids’ lives.

I wrote this point purposefully after “Keeping Margin,” because I’m beginning to see how the two go together. Without margin, our kids wouldn’t be free to serve and to learn how to develop relationships.

We don’t really call it “serving” or volunteering though, this is just life.

We all jump in and help when needed, just as other people are here for us. We love people and we want to get to know them. Not as objects of our ministry, but as real, delightful human beings created in God’s image, who make our lives richer.

Recently, I’ve had multiple people reach out to me and say how much it blesses them that our three oldest children walk up to them at church to say hi, look them in the eye when they’re talking, and remember their name. They tell me how much joy it gives them to have a conversation with our kids, to learn about the book Judah is reading or Amie’s art class, Gabe’s new Pokemon deck, or Noah’s bugs.

David and I tell our kids, “We learn manners because it’s a way to honor people, both in our family and outside of our family.”

I feel blessed that our kids get so much practice talking to all sorts of different people at all different ages.  One of my main goals as a parent is to raise children who are both kind and genuinely interested in people.  This doesn’t just happen; it takes intentional practice.

I want them to notice outsiders, to the person standing alone, and reach out and draw them in. I want them to understand that “friends” doesn’t just mean people their own age or people who look like them. I want them to have the joy, as I have, of realizing that the more people you welcome into your life, the more you grow and change and blossom.

It’s happening already, and it’s beautiful.

 

 

Teaching K-1

This is a good time to talk about something else that worked: teaching the Kindergarten – First Grade class at church.

Taking on this class was not my intention or desire. I’ve taught pretty much every age in children’s ministry, but for the past few years I’ve been very comfortable in the toddler nursery and not inclined to move.

However, my help was needed in the K-1 class, who start out in the worship service with their parents, and leave right before the sermon. I can’t say why, but the idea of teaching this age really intimidated me. What if they don’t like me? What if I can’t keep their attention?

But this was the class I was assigned to by one of our children’s directors, and I did it.

Guess what: it worked!

I love the class. And part of the magic is that in the past I taught several of these kids in the toddler nursery. Now they’re five and six years old, all grown up, and I just love spending time with them once a month and getting to know them as bigger kids with hobbies and questions about life and funny school stories.

Gabe has graduated from the class and sits in the worship service each week, but I still have Noah and a passel of other rowdy kindergarten boys that I have to keep in line. But they’re enthusiastic and smart and they make me laugh. Nowadays Judah or Amelie is my helper and that’s even more fun.

Judah is 11 and starting to volunteer in the kids’ classes, and that was the age I started. I realized that I’ve been helping out in church nurseries for 25 years, with very few breaks. Because, though I’ve moved around a bit, one constant across churches, across states and countries, is that they need help with children! And I don’t plan to ever stop until I’m too old or infirm to be of help.

I’ll let you in on a secret: is helping with church kids’ ministry my favorite thing? No.

Do I feel like it’s my gifting? No. Has it ever been my favorite thing in the past 25 years? No.

But it’s needed. It’s a way to love the people God has brought into my life, right here and now. It’s a way to encourage parents who are trying to teach their kids about Jesus, and to lend a hand to our children’s directors who work so hard to serve our church and community. It’s a way to be like Jesus, who encouraged the children to come to Him.

I enjoy teaching kids because I choose to enjoy it.

Time stops every fourth Sunday as I step into that class and looking into ten smiling faces and start us all off with a round of jumping jacks and push-ups, and then circle up on the floor to read a Bible story. It is not time wasted. It’s a blessing.

 

 

Friday Chore Day

So David and I discovered something life-changing at the pastor’s retreat we attended in October.

One of my favorite things about those gatherings was the chance to get insight and problem-solve with other people in our line of work. So as we sat at the hotel conference room table with cups of coffee, we shared that we really struggle with the Weekly Day Off. First of all, we struggle to find one that works. Second, we get grumpy with one another and often end up arguing and ruining the day off.

It turns out, after talking to our friends, that our arguments were basically about Day Off expectations — our lack of identifying and communicating them with one another. How do you find a real day of rest when Sunday is a work day, and you have a family and a job that never totally ends?

Well, our friends Jim and Heather told us what works for them.

They designated Friday as Chore Day. It’s the day to do all the necessary, un-lovely weekend activities. They each plug away at their list of house/life responsibilities. Then, they’re free to enjoy Saturday. Do they at times have church responsibilities or events? Yes. But all their family chores are finished — or set aside, and they can enjoy a slow rhythm of cartoons for the kids, drinking coffee, resting.

David and I were amazed.

So we came home and started doing it. He often works a half-day on Fridays, but that’s okay because I am homeschooling. As much as possible, we then leave Friday afternoons blocked off for Chore Day. I pick up the groceries I ordered Thursday night. David pays bills. I change sheets and do laundry and vacuum. David mows the lawn and cleans the chicken coop.

And then, we have Saturday stretching before us, a glorious freedom. We make sure to communicate beforehand what we’d each like to do with the day. And mostly we end up with a compromise.

Sometimes one of the kids will have a birthday party. Maybe we’ll go to the Farmer’s Market with my parents or we’ll split the kids up and each do something with a couple of them. Sometimes we plan a morning hike. A priority for both of us is to exercise on Saturdays. Often we’ll still do chores — David will organize his workshop or I’ll bottle kombucha or we’ll run to the library to pick up our holds. But it all feels more leisurely and fun, because we’ve saved the fun chores for Saturday.

Simply the act of getting the unpleasant weekend tasks out of the way, as much as possible, allows us to find a day of rest.

We loved discovering this in 2018!

 

 

Giving up social media

This was my first full year without social media since the mid-2000’s (doesn’t it sound funny to say “the mid-2000’s?”).

I got off Instagram in summer of 2017, and after six months or so, permanently deleted both that and my Facebook account (which had been deactivated for years). I never did get into Twitter, so I didn’t need to quit.

Does this sound extreme?

It felt like it for a long time. But I’ll say without hesitation that it’s been a wonderful thing for me.

In short: I’m a happier person without social media.

I do miss keeping up with friends and family. I sometimes feel left out of conversations when people are exclaiming over what someone posted.

But I don’t regret my choice. Social media (I’m specifically talking about Instagram because that’s all I used) made me more distracted, anxious, and discontent in general.

I didn’t like the time I spent scrolling through images — time when I meant to sit and talk to my kids or pick up a book. I didn’t like the mental energy I expended during an experience, deciding how to best photograph and post it to Instagram, wondering how my family looked and many likes I’d get. I didn’t like that my kids were becoming wrapped up in what and how I should post things about them. I didn’t like the way I envied some of my friends or felt like a failure because my homeschool looked nothing like the accounts I followed.

I don’t think Instagram is wrong for everyone. I just think it was wrong for me. I know that one day my kids will probably be on whatever form of social media is in, and I’ll be back on too, to be apart of their lives. That’s several years away yet.

For now I’m giving myself the gift of a life without social media.

It’s a life where my mind feels quieter, I read more, find hobbies, and connect with the people who are right here around me. It’s glorious.

 

 

My prayer closet

This is something new, and it feels strange to be writing about it on the blog. Shouldn’t prayer be private, between me and God? Is this “practicing my righteousness before men, to be noticed by them?”

I don’t know exactly (though I did check with my pastor). I do know that my devotional and prayer life is what it is today largely because of copying the habits of other people, people who’ve been willing to share with me how they pray. And so now I want to share with you.

David has a small walk-in closet in his office at church, and from the moment he saw it, he wanted to turn it into a prayer closet. It took awhile to make it happen, but he carved out time this fall to find a small bookcase, a lamp, a little tufted ottoman, and hung a piece of art on the wall that someone made for him. It’s a quiet, peaceful space to retreat and be alone with God in an office where people are often in and out.

He also preached two sermons from the apostle Paul’s prayer at the end of Ephesians 3, and since Paul said he got on his knees, David asked the congregation to get on their knees at the end of the sermon to pray.

Those were two of my favorite worship services our church has had.

I’ll confess that I’ve never been a person to pray on my knees, but doing it as a church family felt powerful and moving. Someone even asked David if we can do it every week.

And so I started calling our walk-in closet at home the prayer closet. We already have a storage ottoman against one wall where I can kneel, and I’ll bring in a small candle because sometimes our closet smells like shoes. I bring my Bible and a book of prayers we recently got, Every Moment Holy.

There’s another reason for my prayer closet. Something big I’ve learned about myself this year is that I struggle to feel the unconditional love and affection God has for me. It’s something I know beyond a doubt in my head, but not something I know in my heart. This is probably a whole other blog post, but having my eyes opened to it has been a new beginning.

And so the prayer closet is a chance for me to sit in the presence of God and ask Him to let me feel in my heart how much He loves me. I imagine myself like Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus. And I just sit.

I’m learning this habit in fits and starts. It doesn’t come naturally for me, and sometimes it feels powerful, sometimes awkward.

There truly is something about slipping away from the noise in your home and kneeling to pray that grabs your attention and humbles you before our holy God.

 

 

Book Club

Book Club worked for me in 2019!

As you may know, my friend Jessica and I started a Book & Tea Club for ladies in our church several years ago, with help from my mother-in-law, Linda. It was very sweet for awhile, then I needed to quit suddenly because of my struggles with anxiety. It continued on for a year, then the women elected to take a break for a year.

Jessica and I looked at each other at the end of 2016, and said, “It’s time.”

We met once a month this past year, on the third Tuesday night, at Indah Coffee. It was lovely. I enjoyed our book list so much. I enjoyed the conversation and the laughter and a night out with other ladies. I enjoyed getting to know women that I don’t know as well.

We decided that three things have made our Book Club re-launch successful. Ready?

1. We meet monthly instead of every other month. Meeting more often is actually better, because it gives us a real chance to get to know each other.
2. We meet on a weeknight evening, which ended up being better for everyone’s schedules than our former time of Saturday afternoon.
And finally, 3. No one has to host. Or make food! We loved the idea of a tea party each time, but people got worn out.

This time around, we wanted to make it as easy as possible, so we were free to celebrate the main thing: books!

I learned so much last year and had lots of fun. We’re all excited about the list for 2019. If you’re curious, our first book is The Road Back to You, by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile. Yep, we’ll be talking about the Enneagram!

 

Our road trip!

You probably knew I was going to mention this.

Our Road Trip worked wonderfully in 2019. It was a beautiful gift and a dream come true for David and me. We still can hardly believe we actually did it.

I plan to write a post of my Road Trip Reflections soon.

 

Thanks for bearing with me through this post. Next up: what didn’t work in 2018!