Thursday, August 28, 2008

First Day of Bible Study

Today was the first day of my Fall Bible Study. We are doing Kay Arthur's Return to the Garden: Embracing God's Design For Sexuality.

Really? Yes, it is a Bible study on sexuality. Can you imagine?

What I love about this is the age range of the ladies in the group. There are some who have great-grandchildren to new mothers to young adult women. One lady shared that she is 66 years old and is madly in love with her high school sweetheart since being reunited with him after 40 years. They have both been married twice before and lost spouses both from divorce and death. They are keeping themselves "pure" for each other until they are married after the first of the year. Isn't that the sweetest thing you've ever heard?

I love that.

Today was the introduction and it was a general overview of our culture's emphasis on "in your face" sex and what it does to our view of ourselves and our intimate relationships.

Kay Arthur has quite a testimony that she shared bits of in the DVD today. Put it this way: she is qualified to teach this study. There was one moment when I literally thought, "Did she just say that? I can't believe she just said that!" But more importantly, she said that her goal is to teach each of us how to uncover for ourselves what God's Word says by an inductive method of study. Asking the "5 W's and 1 H" questions to each passage, highlighting key words and really understanding what God says. That is a skill that will go on long after this study is over.

One final thought that I had after the lesson today is that WE are responsible for teaching our children what God's word says and that it is ABSOLUTE TRUTH and what we base our behaviors on. If we do not teach our children, they will learn from the world and what the world shows us is the polar opposite of what God teaches. What a tremendous responsibility!

Sunday, August 17, 2008

The Invisible Woman

I might be the last woman to see this, but I love it. I hope it blesses you as it blessed me.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

One final challenge

Oh, the dreaded exercise. How I hate it. Not so much doing the exercises or being sore, or sweating, or any of that. It is all of the preparation to the exercising. Like putting on a sports bra. And shoes. And clothes.

Carving out time in the day to do the exercising is also a problem. I would like to exercise before showering so that I don't have to waste time showering twice in one day. After all, there are more important things to do during the day like writing self-deprecating blog posts about all of the challenges in my life in order to run off the one person who reads my blog.

What is frustrating to me though, is that I lead such a sedentary lifestyle that I know if I put in a little effort it would yield such a high payoff. But then, you have to put on shoes. and a sports bra.

Putting it in writing is actually helpful, because it makes me see how silly it is not to want to put clothes and shoes on.

To sum up these last few posts, my challenges all boil down to one thing and one thing only. I am LAZY. There is no one to change that, except me and me alone. I will let you know how I progress during the next few weeks, because I am committed to changing some of these (if not all of these) challenges into routines.

Here's hoping.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Still more on my challenges

Time alone with God.

You know, this is really a topic.

I love God. I love Jesus. I believe that the instant I die, I will be present with the Lord. I watch some christian shows on TV, one of which is Wednesdays with Beth on Life Today. Have you ever seen her on this show? Have you ever seen Beth Moore in anything? She always seems to be SO EXCITED to "get a word from the Lord". Sometimes she says, "Is there anything you would rather be doing besides getting a word from the Lord?" and, "Oooh! I'm so fired up right now, I just can't wait to read you this passage from the Bible."

You know, I'm not sure I have ever been that excited about reading the Bible or "getting a word from the Lord".

Is that a character flaw? Is that something I should be worried about? Am I not spiritual enough? Do I not love God as much as I should? What does that mean?

I have heard people say that when you fall in love with a person that you want to be with that person all the time so that you know everything about them. The point being that because we are supposed to be so in love with the Lord that all we should want to do is be in His word or in prayer all of the time.

I don't feel like that. I feel bad that I don't feel like that. But I don't. What does that do for my testimony?

Don't get me wrong, though. I love doing my Bible Study lessons and I love going to Sunday School and church and learning more about the Bible and how it applies to our current lives. I love all of that, but when it comes down to getting up an hour earlier than everyone in my house every. single. day. to have quiet time, I just don't feel it. It's just not something I feel so compelled and excited about. Now, I know, I could fit the quiet time in some other time of the day and I may do that, especially when I am doing a Bible study, but sometimes I don't.

So, I have prayed to get a longing and a hunger for spending time with the Lord. I guess now, the challenge is actually sitting down and doing it.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

More challenges

So, yesterday, we covered cleaning/organizing.

Today, I thought we would talk about cooking. This one, I think I can get a handle on if I try, but there is the key word: try. The reason for my reluctance to try is that I think that cooking is a terrible job and I hate it. Eating, I love, but cooking is for the birds.

We go out to eat several times a week. This is not good on the budget and is probably not as healthful as eating home cooked food at home.

So, I have identified the problem. I don't like to cook, but eating out is expensive.

Here is the solution as I see it:

1. I need a meal plan.
2. I need a grocery list for my meal plan.
3. I need to discipline myself to actually cook what is on my meal plan so that the food is ready at the desired meal time.
4. I should get started on this right now.

This leads my to my next challenge which is couponing. I really like to get the receipt for my groceries and look at the bottom where it says "You saved $xx.xx today". I love for that number to be really high. What ends up happening, though is that I only buy what is on sale or what I have a coupon for and not so much of what I need. Then I wind up with the pantry filled with strange things that don't go together to make a meal. If I buy only from a list, I end up spending nearly $15,000/year on food, which I blogged about in the beginning of my blog. (I don't know how to link to that specific post, or I would do it here.)

Also, snacks and meals other than dinner? I'm not such a good planner of those either.

So, I'm going to get started on my meal plan for next week RIGHT NOW.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Challenges in my life right now

Oh, challenges. There are many.

Cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, couponing, bill paying, time alone with God, kids, exercising.

What I really need is a plan of attack. How am I going to get all of these things done? How does anyone get all of these things done?

I am not an organized or creative person by nature, so I am already starting behind the curve on most of this stuff. I have tried and failed at the FlyLady plan numerous times, but I think I see where she is trying to go with it. Do a little bit every day and see how much you progress over time.

I think I need a list or a schedule. My excuses include: maybe summer is a bad time to begin with this because there isn't really a schedule to our days. Also, since I work a totally random schedule, it makes it hard to say that I will do this or that on one certain day of the week, unless I say that about a weekend day, and I like to have the weekend days as flexible as possible. I can't clean with the kids around. There is too much to do.

One of my friends who has been a full time working mother, to a stay at home mother, to a full time student/stay at home mother has a daily chore list. She just looks at the day of the week, and does the chore. If she doesn't get the chores of the day done, she just does them the next week. Sounds like a good plan, but I get bogged down in the planning and not in the doing.

The other major problem to my housekeeping is that I tend to be a hoarder. I have things in drawers and stuffed in corners and in boxes in different areas of the house. If I go through the boxes, I can usually pare them down, but there always seems to be stuff that I don't want to get rid of, but they don't have a place. Some of these things include baby pictures that need to go in albums or scrapbooks. I have some scrapbooking supplies that are in a box and I have no idea how to scrapbook. I guess I thought if I bought the supplies, that it would just occur to me how to do it.

So, I have rambled on, whined and complained about my lack of cleaning finesse. Just wait until I elaborate on the rest of my challenges.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

bloggy commitment issues

It has been so long since I have posted anything that the screen even looks different. Have they changed this thing?

Over the last few days and weeks, I have thought about so many things I could blog about, but I feel that my writing is so inconsequential that it doesn't matter if I write anything or not. But it would be nice to have some things documented if not just for my own reference.

It occurs to me that everything in life is a commitment, from committing to shower everyday to keeping house to blogging. Of course there are priorities in these commitments and so sometimes they may or may not get done in a day. Sometimes showering is a difficult task to get in, but as BooMama says, "We have to have GOALS."

So my goal for today is to get this boggy blog back to it's original grandeur.