Heart Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Growing In Grace

A Full Plate but a Light Burden

January 23, 2016Tracy

“You have a lot on your plate.” It’s a statement I hear often, and I know it’s true. I homeschool, I cook nearly everything from scratch to accommodate our food sensitivities, I’m a pastor’s wife with various responsibilities and projects, not to mention I work at home now as a writer. It’s a full plate. It’s easy to feel like I’m pulled in a thousand directions, to feel overwhelmed by the tension. There are days when that full plate seems too heavy.

Perhaps that’s why the book Rhythms of Grace resonated with me. The author Kerri Weems discussed the tensions we often feel from too much to do. Her comment was that we feel tension when those tasks have opposing priorities. But, if there is a way to have every task share the same priority, our pace of life would change. That’s what her book is about: changing your pace, setting your life’s rhythm, “discovering God’s tempo for your life.”

It’s easy to let our “to-dos” set our life’s rhythm. But my life purpose is not to check off all the boxes for the day (though it gives me great joy to do so). My purpose is to seek God and know Him more. And the delight is that I can accomplish that in so many varied ways—cleaning my house, making meals, serving my family and church family, teaching a class or Bible study, writing a story, or ministering in an assisted living facility.

To see my to-dos and projects as either achieving the same goal or at odds with each other was new—and liberating. The idea brought so much clarity.

Were each of my tasks serving a purpose of their own? Were all of these activities part of separate agendas? Or was I seeing each task, each project, as just one more way to seek Him? These questions help me to cut what doesn’t belong and embrace what does. Most importantly, these questions help me to remember why I do what I do.

I’m not pulled in a thousand different directions. Instead I have a thousand threads weaving my life into His. With each task, I have the grace and opportunity to know Him more. Yes, I have a full plate, but that full plate can be a feast of His goodness and grace in my life.

Embracing Solitude

April 7, 2014Tracy

Perhaps it’s the introvert in me, but certain times of the day I absolutely crave solitude. And with three lively {loud} children filling my halls and both levels of my house with their whoops and hollers, I especially crave silence with that solitude.

So I carve out a space in the afternoon, a quiet time that is rigidly observed. It’s a time for Littlest to nap and the older two to choose creative activities that aren’t as noisy (coloring, drawing, reading, legos). And as the echoes of screaming chaos fade into the bliss of afternoon stillness, I sink into my favorite chair to savor the moments. But, oh! does that time seem short, even more so as Littlest is now in a big-boy-bed and his naps are consequently shorter.

But I’ve recently discovered that my habits for my time may not be the best use of my solitude. Am I really allowing myself to be alone?

Here’s what I’m getting at. My first moments of stillness consist of immediately connecting to the world-wide-web of people and information. I turn off the noises in my house, and open immediately to the “noise” of email and facebook. I am not “alone” but simply surrounding myself with a different group of people, a wonderful group of people but people no less. And so, rather than using these precious few moments to really nurture myself and connect with the One who can renew my strength for the last lap of my day, I distract myself.

Am I ditching the internet? No, I need those connections and friendships with people. But I also need to steward them well, to keep those connections and the internet in check.

It’s much easier to fill my life with noise (even good noise) than to be still before the Lord and delight in His presence, to sharpen the creative gifts He’s entrusted me with, and to rest.

Trying to find more solitude and serenity for your own life? Check out these 52 other ideas that are inspiring me.

Planting Habits, Reaping Character

April 2, 2014Tracy

One aspect of my Charlotte Mason research that I have loved is the great advice on habits or character-training. Her advice is phenomenal.

It begins with prayerfully considering what character trait to work on with your child—just one at a time.

The next step is a conversation with your child to discuss the harm of his/her current behavior and the character trait that will be the solution. This is not a lecture, but rather a healthy conversation to engage the will of your child in this effort and to position yourself as your child’s friendly ally in this endeavor.

During this conversation with your child, discuss some strategies that you will use to help remind him/her until the habit is established: a question you will ask to help the child think about his/her behavior and a nonverbal cue to strengthen the child’s will and remind him you are their to help. The idea is that you do not want to nag or command. You want the child’s brain to be doing the thinking, charting a new neural path for this habit.

The last step is patient vigilance; new habits aren’t made overnight. Be vigilant as you hold your child accountable for the new behavior. But then, provide reinforcement as well—a Scripture verse to encourage, a biography of a person learning or exhibiting this trait to inspire your child.

So how do habits coexist with the Holy Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit? Is this my work or His? My son and I recently had this discussion, and I illustrated it this way: I can plant a seed in good soil, water it, provide just the right sunshine and nutrients, but only God can make that seed grow into a plant and bear fruit.

Habits are prepping the soil and watering the seed. I can teach good habits and encourage right behavior, but I cannot change my child’s heart or inject character into his life. That’s the Holy Spirit’s work. Habits may plant the seed, but only God gives the increase.

I cannot recommend these free resources enough! They have been absolutely invaluable to me lately. For more on habit training and parenting, download Smooth and Easy Days, Masterly Inactivity, and The Way of the Will.

Filling my cup

March 31, 2014Tracy2 Comments

There is a very sobering and humbling reality to answered prayer, a moment of awe when you see your answer and realize that Someone was listening to you. Of course, I know He listens to me, but seeing the reality of that before me is an emotionally moving experience. It causes me to “be still” and realize He is God.

I’m not even talking about the huge miraculous answers to crisis, but more the quiet prayers for strength that you pray about mid-day, the prayers that only God knows about. I’m talking about the “answers” that speak to your spirit as only God would know to speak.

Lately, I have had some answers to prayer that were so perfectly and exactly what my soul needed, that I don’t think even I could have articulated that need as well as God answered. Do you know what I’m talking about?

For our homeschool and parenting, that answer has been the ideas of Charlotte Mason, and a call to simplify what we do.

Another answer, for homemaking and my own spiritual journey, came through this series: 52 ways to more serenity in your life and home.

In the “behind the scenes” of my life, God is filling my cup, even as it is daily emptied and slopped and spilled through the day’s activities. Just when I think I’ve emptied the last drop, I find He’s filled me to overflowing once more.

The sun comes up. It’s a new day dawning. Time to sing Your song again! Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes.

~10,000 reasons

On Mission with a home mission statement

February 12, 2014Tracy1 Comment

It’s easy to full pulled in a thousand directions, whether you stay at home, work at home, work full time, or whatever. Bottom-line, we have a lot of hats we wear, a lot of roles we fill. How do I know what to prioritize, what to tackle and what to set aside? For me, having a home mission statement helps tremendously. It helps to remember not only what I want to be doing but WHY I want to be doing it.

Brainstorm your Priorities

Think through what you want to be doing in your home, but also add to the list the “why.” For each priority, ask yourself: why is this a priority for me. We all want a clean home, right? But why do I want it? If I figure out the why, I also know what “clean” really means. Because my definition of clean and my kids definition of clean are not the same. What is clean and what can we settle on? Why do we want it?

When my home is clean, it changes our mood. We all feel a lot of stress leave. When the clutter is gone, there is a sense of freedom and peace. We are energized, and our home becomes a place we want to be. That’s a mission statement. Now, I have a daily reminder of why I want to work on this mess. Otherwise, honestly, taming the chaos seems like an exercise in futility—unless I know why I’m doing it.

Craft your Home Mission Statement

From your brainstorm, right out a sentence or two or three that captures the priority and the why. Again, this does not need to take long or be overly complicated. It can change over time. Then, have fun making it pretty. Put it on a chalkboard in your kitchen. Hang it on your fridge. Print it off and frame it. You want to put it in a place where you will regularly see it and be reminded, which is why I think it’s important that we take the time to make it beautiful. The way you display your home mission statement should be a reflection of those priorities as well; it should be something that inspires you on the hard days, not another reminder of what you are not getting done.

If this doesn’t inspire you and help you, skip it. That’s right, forget I ever said anything. The purpose of this is to help inspire us to the tasks that are hard, to remind us of why we put all the effort into our homes in the first place.

My home mission statement hangs on the side of my fridge. It’s been there for years, and it’s not something I read or go over everyday. I don’t have it memorized necessarily, but more than once, as I’ve opened the fridge for yet another meal, it reminds me of my calling, MY purpose, what it is that I want my life and my home to be about. And suddenly, it breathes fresh air into a stagnant day. I’m not just keeping house; I’m making a home.

Acknowledging my limits: Super Woman doesn’t live here

January 22, 2014Tracy1 Comment

I’ve been busy here. Very busy. I’ve been busy learning exactly what all I cannot do, what is beyond me, what I don’t have time for, what needs to change. What a start to the new year! While most are acknowledging their potential, I’m starting the year by acknowledging my limits.

On one particularly hair-raising day, I was loading the dishwasher and trying to catch up in the kitchen while wrestling Littlest out of the dishwasher and answering one of Oldest’s “how does this work” questions. My daughter came into the chaos with a broken toy she wanted me to fix but which was beyond fixing. When I broke the news to her, she asked me why I couldn’t fix it. And in exasperation I exclaimed, “Because I’m not SuperWoman, believe it or not!”

To which my ever-so-knowledgeable-almost-seven-year-old replied, “I think it’s WonderWoman, Mom.”

Yeah, I’m not her either.

I’m openly acknowledging my limits here, folks. There are things I simply can’t do. There are things I’m failing at. There are things that will just have to wait.

One of the things I tried and then quit over the Christmas break was potty-training Littlest. The other two were trained by 18 months, so in my mind I’ve really felt guilty and “behind” for not having even started with Littlest while his 2 year birthday looms only a month and a half away. So we gave it a try with one week to get it going before I headed back into our homeschool routine. Big mistake. Totally set myself up to fail. And by our first day of trying to homeschool and potty train, I knew it, too. I acknowledged my limits and put the Little Stinker back into his diaper—with a huge sigh of relief from both of us.

Our homeschool curricula and schedule is another area I’m acknowledging my limits. (More details to come.) But suffice it to say that I’m not SuperWoman, or WonderWoman, or whoever she is. I’m only human after all. And I suppose, it’s about time I realized it.

Inviting Grace Home

June 3, 2013Tracy2 Comments

Home is a place where life happens, and life is messy. Fights ensue. Messes splatter across fresh cleaned floors. Laundry piles behind closed doors. And meals are consumed as quickly as possible before the next thing needs to be done. In the disillusioning reality of it all, it’s easy to become discontent and look for solutions in the wrong places: if the house were bigger, if the kitchen were newer, if the furniture weren’t so old, if the kids had less junk. In the midst of doing and living, sometimes it’s even easy to forget what our homes are, what life is, what grace really means.

I’ll tell you what my home is NOT. It’s not a House Beautiful or Better Homes and Gardens magazine home, where the decor is perfect, the toys have all been contained in cute little hampers, and the children are cleaned up and happy—at least for however long the photo shoot lasts. It’s not a sitcom home where the problems and solutions all wrap up neatly within a half hour drama. It’s not even the picture-perfect blog home, with peaceful smiles and sunlight streaming in. And if any of these were my vision for my home, I’m afraid I would live in utter defeat and hopelessness because these images are not reality. Pretending perfection leaves no room for grace. And what my home needs, what I need, more than a new cleaning routine or organization tool—I need to invite grace home.

My home is a place of messy mistakes, sinful people, and dusty furniture. But I do have a vision for my home that embraces all of its imperfection. My vision for my home is a place that welcomes life’s mess and receives grace daily.

Inviting Grace Home

I want my home to be a place of grace—where we sin and learn forgiveness, where we spill and learn responsibility, where we succeed and learn humility, where we live and learn the purpose of life, where we discover what we cannot do and learn of the One who can.
I want my home to be a place for life, a greenhouse of living—a place of nurturing and encouragement, a place of redemption and creating, a place of equipping.
I want my home to be a place of sustaining—where we learn to give when we are all spent, where we learn to love when there is nothing left, where we learn we have needs and Who can meet those needs.

So if the choice comes down to new decor, a cleaning frenzy, or some quiet time alone with God, it’s going to be my vision for what my home is that determines the choices I make. And those choices will define me as much as the home I live in. But here’s the key: it will not be accomplished by what I do as much as by who I am.

My home will not be a place of grace, if I’m not living in the grace I’ve been given. My home will not bring life if my heart and words are not reflecting the Life. My home will not sustain anyone if I am serving out of the limitations of myself instead of out of the abundance of the I Am.

Inviting grace home involves first receiving it into my life—not “giving myself grace,” because truly I’m incapable of giving myself what I’m desperately in need of. Someone perfect, someone infinite, someone full of grace must give grace. Inviting grace home means accepting God’s grace in my life and realizing my need for it. Inviting grace home is extending God’s grace to others instead of requiring perfection. Inviting grace home is embracing the messiness of life as the perfect canvas for God’s redeeming masterpiece.

My home may not be magazine-cover-worthy, but that’s not really my goal. My goal is to be a canvas for God’s grace. So welcome to our home, where messiness and imperfection have a seat at the table, and where grace has an open-invitation.