Sunday, March 6, 2011

Spiritual Disciplines as a busy mom ...

As a kid, I remember time creeping by. The minute hand took years to get to it's destination for recess. Christmas was a decade away in November. My birthday seemed to happen once a century.

Now I wake up, change a few diapers, fix a little food, maybe get a load of laundry done, and poof it's bed time. The hours race by me leaving me feeling dizzy and a bit disoriented. I often ask, "Where did that day go?"

So in a day that lasts a minute, when do I find time to practice the spiritual disciplines: prayer, study, solitude, etc.?

My experiment of the last couple of months looks something like this ... I've let the lines of the spiritual and the everyday blur. For example, at the breakfast table Phoebe and I read the lectionary passages intermittently with her children's Bible story book. She loves to pray for her family and friends by name. While I throw a load of laundry in the dryer I try to contemplate the scripture we read in the morning. During nap time I sit for at least ten minutes in just the quiet. When we go on walks I try to remember to celebrate God's creation. If I wrong one of my children, I confess it to them even if they don't understand.

I'm realizing God fully knows the demands of motherhood. He doesn't expect us to grow in spite of our circumstances, but uniquely through them.

Friend how do you incorporate faith in the everyday?

1 comment:

amberly said...

Kathleen Norris wrote a little book called "The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women's Work." I think you'd like it. Laundry as liturgy - repeated work of the people that we do not to "finish" but to survive... I think the two should work together well, which I'm trying to learn...