Prioritizing

I love it when my friends re-prioritize their life “out loud.”  I really do.  Because each time, it helps me re-prioritize my life.  Whether they point to something in their own life that also has happened to become out of balance in mine, or whether they just make me re-think everything to make sure I’m focusing on what I’m supposed to be focusing on…  I really appreciate friends who are open and honest, who are obviously making God and family their first priority, and they don’t care who knows it.

Being relatively without internet, especially for the first year of our marriage, was a way to really step back from so many things that took way too much time online.  As it is, these days I check email several times a week next door, some days it’s several times a day.  Sometimes that’s too many.  But at the same time, checking it once every day or two helps me feel more on top of my responsibilities online than the overwhelming feeling of finding 36 messages when I haven’t been online half the week.  E-mail is my way to keep in touch with some special people.  Like my brother’s girlfriend.  And a very special mentor who also happens to be a Southern lady.  Gone are the days when I exchanged dozens of short emails with a certain bestest girlfriend.  But at the same time, our emails are filled with more content when we do email.  And that’s nice, too.

Then there’s blogs.  I keep trimming my Google Reader and LiveJournal lists to just those blogs of true friends, of those who I really want to keep in touch with.  True, some are friends I’ve never met in person…but some of us date way back to the time I put my pen pal ad in New Attitude magazine.  We wrote old-fashioned letters back then.  And some of us, of course, date way further back than that, but as busy moms keep up via blogs these days (glancing in Kelly’s direction…).  The only two non-personal blogs I read (other than that one at ylcf.org…) are those of Josh Harris and his twin brothers the Rebelutionaries.  Gotta keep up with those guys.  Never actually met them, but feel like I’ve known of them forever, since my parents went to their parents’ seminars way back when (even before the days of I Kissed Dating Goodbye!)…

When I took the YLCF respobsibilities back over from Natalie, it was with the stern determination on my part not to let it consume too much of my time.  Blogger’s ability to schedule posts has been the biggest lifesaver.  We streamlined the site so all I have to do is make minor edits from time to time and plug in the courtship story links that our amazing team member Elisabeth sends to me all ready to go.  I do enjoy previewing the posts (though sometimes I nearly have a heart attack at the grammar and spelling…then hit the delete key, or else bravely write the person back and say “love the idea, but re-write it so it’s decently worded and at least half the words are spelled correctly”).  Editing must be in my blood (as I glance at my mother and her mother…).  Not to mention writing.  When Natalie and I talked about what to do with YLCF, the truth was, we knew we would always be writing…so why not keep a place to write?

I’ve always liked the movie “Chariots of Fire.”  Eric Liddell felt God’s pleasure as he ran.  But when I write, that’s when I feel God’s pleasure.  I’ve been writing as long as I can remember.  Letters to Merritt and his sisters…letters to my pen pals…  That little girls’ club “Purry Kittens” had to have a newsletter, of course, and now the rest is history as we look at what ylcf.org has become.  Then I discovered LiveJournal and a more personal way to keep up with my friends.  But there got to be so many and it was so very overwhelming.  I got married and only kept in touch with a handful of those people.  Now what used to be the daily letter to my boyfriend, which I would compose all day in my head, figuring out just how to word a certain anecdote…it’s become a not-so-daily blog that keeps grandmas and aunties informed on the main feature in our lives these days: my little Pumpkin.

Yet I want to be focusing on my little Pumpkin, not just thinking about what I’ll write about her.  So now I write during naptimes and when I’m at the store with no customers (like right now).  How much you’ll find written here in the blog from the little pink house once Pumpkin takes fewer naps remains to be seen…  But I will have to teach her how to write, how to type.  And what fun that will be.

The strange paradox of being blessed and cursed with the love of writing is that you don’t ever want to be too busy writing about life to live it, but in living it there is the constant drive to write about it.  Yes, the need to write ebbs and flows with the seasons and times of your life.  But it’s always there, buried beneath the surface.  And my love of reading often fights with my love of writing, as well.  They are both what happens in my spare time.  But which one gets precedence is a constant question.  And when my stack of “to review” books gets high, I get overwhelmed, and yet I don’t know why, because I only review books I love reading anyway.

But writing is only one slice of life that I have to prioritize.  There’s the dishes, the always-dirty floor that my Punkin is always eating things off of.  The bathroom which never quite gets cleaned once a week, the laundry which is calling my name more than once a week these days.  And the priorities I try to define as I go about my day.  Have to do the dishes before Punkin’s been down very long or I’lll be too noisy and wake her up.  Can fold clothes and set table if I’m very quiet, and cleaning the bathroom while she’s sleeping is easy, but don’t dare put away dishes or she’ll be awake in a flash.  Of course, while she’s up, there’s the considerations of how she’ll be heartbroken when I put the broom away and that she will always get just out of sight when my hands are covered in bread dough.  There’s the rush to make the house just so right before Daddy gets home.  Trying to have dinner warm when he gets there only to have it over-cooked because he had a late customer.  It’s a constant running list in my head of which thing should take precedence.  And since so many of the things are things I can’t do while my Pumkin sleeps, how to involve her in them so she doesn’t always feel like she’s being placed in her walker so Mommy can get something done.  My Punkin is one of my first priorities.  But so is her daddy who likes a clean house and warm dinners.  So we balance priorities.  All day, all week long.

I don’t always get it right.  Sometimes my love comes home to find a stressed wife and a grumpy Punkin who is feeling ignored.  But sometimes, we have time to read Little Britches together in the fifteen extra minutes before Daddy has to leave for work.  And sometimes, like last night, we sit down with just-popped popcorn and homemade eggnog and watch the first half of “Miss Potter” together, while Punkin’ snuggles contentedly between us sucking her fingers and holding her burp rag.  And that’s when it feels like, even if for just a moment, we’ve prioritized well enough for the day that we have our tasks taken care of and we are doing what’s most important.  And that is why prioritizing matters.

Here’s to prioritizing.  And lots of eggnog and good books.  Not to mention a few stolen moments to write about all the good times, so the memories are recorded to look back upon some other rainy day…