More January.
Two entire weeks of regular routine: Sunday evenings printing school plans, mornings with Jameson reliably preparing breakfast while other children fall into their familiar chores, gathering for Circle Time and then breaking for independent school, lunch made reliably by William followed by read-aloud and at least an hour outside (although, confession, we may be stealing far more than an hour each day, as the snow has been perfect for sledding and who can interrupt happy children at play?), rosy cheeks back around the table to finish up books or off with a rag or two to finish a chore before Mama reliably makes dinner and we wind up another day. All to the tune of someone practicing piano, because oh my, there’s a lot of piano playing every day!
My new planner arrived only a couple days into January (sort of forgot my last one wouldn’t just keep going forever and was shocked to not find January 2019 after December’s pages ended!) Top three things, it says, and I’ve been mostly filling those out thusly:
Read (my own and out loud for fun to littlest ones)
Pray (continually, fervently, with greater tenacity)
Worship (because it’s true, I used to sing and play for hours and I am so very rusty)
Those don’t all get ticked off every day, especially the last. But it’s a new focus and before I fill up the space of winter routine days with other things, I want to remember and refresh those foundations.
Waking early every morning, and the early is the easy part. The getting out the door to walk has been much harder. Enid wakes too early too often, and just as I’m thinking, “TOO EARLY!”, I’m reminded that it’s not too early, it’s just right and my times are in His hands. She’s reminding me that babies are lessons in flexibility and serving. Putting others first.
So while my Bible study is not always followed by a brisk, cleansing walk in the January air, I know that someday it will and these days will pass too quickly.
A month of back on track eating for the Mr and me, and “low” sugar for kids. No video games. Throw in early dark and heaping snow and nursing baby and suddenly we’re deep into winter’s hibernating. Lots of thinking, lots of growing. Is that how winter is for everyone? I don’t know. But winter seems to, for us, quiet the world enough that we can hear our inner workings and the refining process happening within. We can read books and be provoked and ponder ideas the change us. Children play long enough to grow bored and selfish and so they grow, too, and I don’t mind. We are under discipline, all of us, and in the pain we know the deep, deep love of our Father.
