The Extra Step to Victorious Living

[ellenmelon]

Getting a good nights sleep is proving to be one of the most effective ways for me to be victorious. I try to get 7 hours of sleep.

[barbszy]

One of my best strategies is to Wake Up First. I find that I can be much more calm, pleasant, flexible, whatever!! if I have had a good sleep AND if I get a jump on the day before others are up and needing things. Then when they all get up, I am ready for them.

Do you know what I am most looking forward to, once the school year starts? The chance to attend Daily Mass! I haven't been able to do that, really every day, since I finished grad school.

[ellenmelon]

Today I made myself take a day of rest. I was going to go into work after church but somehow realized during church that:
a) my job is not that important that I forget my family
b) that it is the Lord's day and I could take some time and pray for more people than I can during the week
c) that dh and I could take a walk in the woods with the little dog while dd2 was at a swimming party and dd1 is now off to college.

It was truly a wonderful time for dh and I. I packed a hurried pb sandwich lunch, after we ate on a picnic table by the lake, I napped and he threw sticks into the water for the little dog to fetch, she loves to swim. Then we took a walk and afterwards went over to the next state park just minutes up the road, Green wood Furnace. There we sat in a picnic pavillion and ate some bbq sandwiches. We liked the pavillion so much we want to rent it for a fall family bbq party. I brought the little windup radio and we sat and read our own books, listened to the radio, and called little dog back from chasing someone's old chicken bones trash.

Now that I am working full time I look back on all the free time I had and how I frittered it away. I get more done now than ever before and free time is a treasure.

[ellenmelon]

Now I don't know if I'll be able to explain some of these things. They are tiny revelations on how to be an agreeable, humble person.

They come to me week after week while in church, just one brief glimmer of an idea. All are takes on the alternative to being a loud self seeking person.

1. Sometimes God acts through us when we think it is our own mistakes. This gives me a new perspective on mistakes. Sometimes they are intentional acts of God as he is the one in control. From the psalms, The King's heart is like channels of water in the hands of the Lord.

2. When the conversation is pleasant between two people that just met, don't draw attention to myself at the end, let the pleasantness sit. I can be a silent participant.

3. Keep the Sabbath Holy. A day of rest is important. God will reward your other days of the week if you give him the one to focus on him and his family.

4. Service, no matter how public, or private, is service to God. Eucharistic Ministers are charged to be regular church goers, good models, and loving. But they also put their pant legs on one leg at a time like everyone else. Now that I am a EM I see that there is no pride in standing at the front of the church, just service to all the millions of people seeking God's grace just like I do when I go to communion.

[ellenmelon]

And finally a new insight to being irritated.

I usually only express my short temper with family. And for years felt justified in doing so, after all they can be so irritating!

Today in church it occured to me that it is a real disservice to God to be that way with my family.

For my dh is just as loved by God as the poor soul on the street corner. Why would I treat him badly?

I begin to see that for years I have cultivated a hardness in my heart to him and that is why those little things to irritate come out.

Now that I see him, my dh, as a loved one of God, I see the places in which I can begin to crumble away the hardnesses so I will then begin to respond to him in tenderness, even when he is driving me up the wall, because guess what, it won't drive me up the wall.

Does this make sense to anyone?

[ellenmelon]

And finally, Barbszy, I am so glad for you! It was 5 1/2 hours a day that I had to myself and I loved every hour of it. I hope you can fall into a daily rhythm that pleases.

[barbszy]

Ellen, what you said about only showing your temper to your family is so true for me as well! I am trying, this week, to be kinder and gentler.

I have a book at home that I started reading called "Finding the Hero in Your Husband." The author's last name is Slattery. A friend recommended it to me. I think that once we get back home I am going to FINISH IT!!

[ellenmelon]

Wow, it doesn't seem like it was August when we all last posted but that is what the date says!

here it is the end of October!

I am happy for I have found a way to work religious devotions into my daily work routine.

I can pray in the car on the way to work, usually taking the form of a quick rosary decade

I can stop in at the chapel between my walk from one campus building to the other and spend a 15 minute break in silent meditation or on Fridays they have Eucharistic Devotion in the chapel

And on Wed or Thurs they have confessions in the afternoon so if I work hard I can get off a half hour early and take care of that. My regular church has it on Friday nights and I am always forgetting or running the kids or in my sweat pants when I remember that I forgot to go!

Finally, there is no more excuse to miss church as there is a 9 PM mass on campus on Sunday nights, so even if we are raking in the yard all weekend, we can still get to that last mass of the weekend...

hurrah!

[ellenmelon]

Barbszy, how did that book go on Finding the Hero in Your Husband? I know mine is but showing it is another story!

[barbszy]

It's a good book but I am not yet done reading it. Bad me