Help
With Your Rule
A Farm Wife's Concerns
Dear Holly,
I am a farm wife. I would appreciate your thoughts on how to be available to husband, family, farm and all the flexibility required here. And also, I am interested in your suggestions for those who have not an overly-cluttered home, but a type of perfectionism which focuses on productivity in the home before the family - a work-a-holic mom, so to speak. I think this is my case. After my career training and professional work, I feel so productivity-oriented that I try to run my home in the same way. I am using your book to find a good balance, but would like to hear this addressed.
Labels: About a Rule of Life
posted by Holly at 2:31 PM
3 Comments:
These certainly are challenging questions - deep questions - and I can only share with you my perspective from my own life.
I am an at-home mom and have labelled myself as this from the start. But it was last year that I realized, in the full sense of the word, that I truly held another full-time job, just like my husband, and that was in my homeschooling. Now, despite usually spending only mornings on academics, I have one child who has learning disabilities and needs more attention and my other children-are-home responsibilities last all day, on many different levels. Then of course, there is normal household work, finances and shopping, dogs and cats, gardens and garbage, etc.
As a result, I realized I wasn't superwoman. :-) I realized that, just as my husband had to rest in the evenings, so did I. Just as my husband couldn't take on lots of extra work during the school year, neither could I. So, I had to limit my extra writing, my website work, and my desires to write another book in the near future, concentrating instead on the vocation God had called me to - marriage and the 5 Ps.
The 5 Ps are the 'hierarchy' of priorities in our lives. I think that perfectionism could be initially channeled into living these priorities well (the top four you will notice deal with relationships),and in the process, one's heart is rechanneled. The mother's rule calls us to be person-centered, not task-centered.
So, I think these points answer many questions. It remains that God, your personal health, your husband and your children - and your time with them in availability and personal presence - these are your top priorities.
Additional tasks, possessions, vounteer work, activities and even farm work all need to be determined and discerned based on the top priorities of the people in your life. So in your present state, determining what needs to be let go perhaps, to enable you to focus more on the family, or for the future, "Can I take this additional farm project on and not take away from the family?" In other words, it is not economics which determines the success of family life, nor a spotless house (altho again, I think a clean home is important) - but it is love. Love must hold priority. All else must be discerned based on love.
As for being task-oriented: I personally understand this, and I believe that it is "acting in conformity with what you know to be true" - ie, the priorities of your prayer life, time with husband and children, and personal prayer space that you will mold your heart to attend to what you interiorly know you are called to be.
As humans, we have free will. We are not bound by the limits of past training, nor stuck in a slavery to habit. We can choose. We can consciously determine what God is asking of us, and can begin to organize our lives to focus on these priorities.
So, perhaps in your circumstance, a real attention to the 'spirit' of your mother's rule would be a prime motivating factor, one which can help you discern the other realities in your life and give you the conviction to begin to choose love over other things.
I used the Flylady's system to supplement my Rule. I feel MROL helps me get the system and spirit of my Rule down, but the actual cleaning schedules, tasks, and routines that Fylady offers is a great way to find productivity without sacrificing quality family time, peace of mind, or sacrificing the spirit of the Rule. It also offers a great way to prevent the spirit of perfectionism to enter our lives. www.flylady.net
dear friend...
a wise priest recently told my mom, the following. i hope you find it helpful.
try not to focus on productivity, but rather fruitfulness.
he has told my mother that this is the natural progression of life. as we get older, we tend to operate at a level that bears fruit rather than a level of mass production. isn't that something?
i am a youngin', but there is wisdom for all ages in that statement. really helps my vocation. i'm not so caught up in finishing the 'to do' list that never is quite finished.
i am to accomplish a certain amount each day and each week... even monthly. but what is important is the fruit of those labors. not whether every item is checked off.
another way to view it is that it's more important to follow God's will, than to want to accomplish my own! so if i'm having numerous interruptions from the children and their needs, then, that is what God wants me to do. a poopy diaper takes precedence to my phone calls. getting dinner on the table a higher priority than watching a show on t.v.
answering the newborn baby cry is the monastery bell ringing in my own little cloister.
i hope that this has helped. perspective is a powerful thing.
if i think of more to add, i hope to come visit again when time allows.
truly,
melanie
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