Behind

Yesterday I felt behind in practically every area of my life. Laundry, unpacking, preparing for the Festival of Nativities, practicing my children, pictures of the trip, grocery shopping, phoning so and so about so and so, visiting teaching, Halloween and on and on and on. Feeling behind isn't pleasant, and playing catch up isn't fun. However, I started thinking about our vacation and decided that's just the way it goes when you go away for eleven days. The part that I think get's us women discouraged is the idea if we were to have been perfectly organized we would have left our homes, and lives perfectly prepared and planned so that eleven days away didn't disrupt even a minute of our harmoniously flowing schedules. Not so much. The adversary's most powerful tool is discouragement. That somehow, if our lives today are not what we expected or asked for or wanted, we should be unhappy. I find the best counter attack for discouragement is gratitude. Yes, this and that could be better or different, but this, this, this and that over there are pretty good and so be thankful. Gratitude melts discouragement away. I am off to do laundry.

A Little Lesson:
The novelty of sitting at a table while traveling 100 kilometers and hour was pretty enticing to my kids, so much so, that they finished all their math/writing assignments that their teachers gave them within the first two days of our holiday. When they came home from their first day back at school I asked if they were behind in anything. Jordan replies, "no, I'm about 20 pages ahead in math." Emily interrupts, "hey so am I!" Clearly I am alone in my sentiments this morning.