Priorities

I had an epiphany today.  One that has been six years in the making and I'm so glad I finally had it because it clears up a LOT for me and my emotions.

Priorities are important but they are not always going to be consistent and steadfast.  Not in the day to day.  I think I've had this ideal that every day my priorities should be exactly the same and in the exact same order and I realized today that this just isn't so.  I have a lot of priorities in my daily life.  They look something like this:

School kids
feed kids
clean house
watch what I eat and try to exercise
time with God - and I'm sad and ashamed to say that this always seems to fall last as the thing that I'll get to "later".

I mean really that's a very simplistic view of it all.  Cleaning involved a multitude of tasks too tedious for me to list out at the moment.  Feeding the kids happens WAY more often in the day than someone without children might think.  Schooling the kids - this one has tripped me up some this year.  I think I've had it in my head that I'm not doing a good job if school does not look the same and in the same setting and at the same time every day.  But really the only thing that can gauge how well I'm doing is the progress the children are making and since we're moving right along in both math and spelling it should be very clear to me that whether we do it upstairs at his desk while I stress about his sister and his brothers continually interrupt or if we do it in the living room or even in the kitchen (like yesterday when he sat on the floor writing and I stood at the sink washing dishes and dictating phrases - I have multi-tasking down to an art form people) while the littles nap and Howler plays an educational game online and we can both think clearly does not actually matter in the grand scheme of his life or mine.  Run on much?  Sorry.

Anyway while that too is something I realized today it's not THE thing that I realized.

What I realized is that yes each day has priorities.  But those priorities are different and fall in a different order each day.  Today the priority is the princess girl who seems to have a tummy bug.  Comforting her and being compassionate towards her today is way more important than being rigid about the house cleaning and the schooling.  We'll work those things in.  Yesterday my priority was schooling Kayd so at naptime (we spent the morning at the library) while his siblings were all asleep that was what I focused on.  By having a primary priority and understanding that cleaning the house is NOT always the top priority of my days (not even the majority of the time is cleaning the top priority) takes a load off me.  It shifts my thinking.  I no longer feel badly that I didn't get to the dishes because I was schooling.  I have a new perspective.  I got to the important task of schooling and the dishes will still be there until whenever they become priority again (usually when we decide to have company over lol).

So take a look at your priorities and see where your heart is.  I know there have just been too many times where I felt like my child being sick was an inconvenience that got in the way of the "real priority" whatever the heck I thought that was for the day.

What a fresh look at life.  I thank God for these little nuggets of truth in life.