Priority #5 - Myself - A Good Cry

Central Texas, where I live, has scarcely seen one drop of rain since late April. This is the most severe drought on record. The drought has almost become a way of life. We can get used to it. Princess Butterfly went on a little trip with Friend Hubby up to Oklahoma this week. She sent me a text message that said, "Rain still exists!" I replied, "Good, bring some home!"

My mind has recently been going through it's familiar circle of "what ifs." I get used to stuffing them back down as soon as they surface, but recently, I had a talk with my uncle. He's the type of person who can pull a cry out of you, in spite of all your best efforts at holding down the fort. In addition to that, in my job as a medical transcriptionist, I had to type a report of a man who had irreversible complications from just a routine surgery and was about to be put on hospice with minutes to hours left to live, and the physician dictating mentioned on more than one occasion the look of fear in the man's eyes. Some days my job is just hard to do.

After that, I seemed to have sprung a leak. The more I tried to stuff my "what ifs" the more difficult they became to contain. My house is rarely completely empty, but this was a karate night. I tried to sit at my computer and work, but one tear slipped away from me and before I knew it, a torrent of tears came tumbling down on my keyboard, blurring my computer screen. I just cried and cried and cried until I couldn't cry any more. I wasn't just crying for the patient in my report. I was crying for my daughter who didn't get to live to go to college and be married and have children. I cried for my grandmother who died the morning of my daughter's funeral, whom I miss terribly, particularly after speaking with my uncle. I cried for my mother who died earlier this year and although our last words to one another expressed our love for one another, it did not erase all the ugly words she said while I was trying to take care of her, and trying to take care of everyone else too.

I had my cry, my thunderstorm, and then I did what my mother always taught me to do. Move forward. We've seen from our Torah readings this year, self-pity never moves anyone into the promised land, ANY promised land. I have a new school year to start, a ministry to help my husband with, and a host of things I need to reorganize and learn. I have been at this mountain long enough. Time to dry the tears and get moving.


"And the Lord spoke to me [Moses], saying, 'You have roamed around this mountain country long enough; turn northward.'" Deuteronomy 2:3 AMP

Blessings,

Priority #4 - My Home - FlyLady and the Month of Av

Romans 7:18-25

For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot perform it. [I have the intention and urge to do what is right, but no power to carry it out.]

For I fail to practice the good deeds I desire to do, but the evil deeds that I do not desire to do are what I am [ever] doing.

Now if I do what I do not desire to do, it is no longer I doing it [it is not myself that acts], but the sin [principle] which dwells within me [fixed and operating in my soul].

So I find it to be a law (rule of action of my being) that when I want to do what is right and good, evil is ever present with me and I am subject to its insistent demands.

For I endorse and delight in the Law of God in my inmost self [with my new nature].

But I discern in my bodily members [in the sensitive appetites and wills of the flesh] a different law (rule of action) at war against the law of my mind (my reason) and making me a prisoner to the law of sin that dwells in my bodily organs [in the sensitive appetites and wills of the flesh].

O unhappy and pitiable and wretched man that I am! Who will release and deliver me from [the shackles of] this body of death?

O thank God! [He will!] through Jesus Christ (the Anointed One) our Lord! So then indeed I, of myself with the mind and heart, serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

I am not able (or I am not disciplined enough) to do FlyLady the way FlyLady is supposed to be done. I am beginning to realize that working from home at my computer is mentally and physically tiring and I can't do everything my mind tells me it wants to do.

I have been very productive on my job lately, mostly because of blogs dealing with productivity. It has been very awe inspiring keeping in front of my eyes on a daily basis ideas that help me to stay focused and get it done.

Now if I can do that for work, can't I do it for housework as well?

This week began the month of Av on the Hebrew calendar. Isaiah 66:23 AMP says that in the kingdom where our Messiah Yeshua reigns, "And it shall be that from one New Moon to another New Moon and from one Sabbath to another Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before Me, says the Lord."

I have certainly learned in this past year (and have been abundantly blessed by it) to mark my week from Sabbath to Sabbath. I have learned to set my year from Torah cycle (Simchat Torah is where Deuteronomy ends and Genesis begins again), I think that marking my months from New Moon to New Moon will be a blessing to me as well.

So rather from switching zones from week to week, I think I will concentrate on one room month by month. So for the month of Av, I want to transform our school room for the new school year. I have middle-schoolers now. It is in bad need of an upgrade. It needs to reflect their maturity and higher levels of learning. Since I work in the room, it will also need to be functional as my home office as well.

In garden news (heavy sigh), my untreated wood on my square foot garden, along with the only thing in the backyard getting water besides the dog bowl, has attracted termites. They have destroyed all my watermelon vines. Sooo. I'm going to Lowe's to buy some termite sprinkles and sprinkle it all around the base of the outside of the box then wait a few weeks. When I get ready to plant my indoor seedlings, which have already begun to sprout, I will dig up all that soil and start again fresh with new soil. I will probably put more soil in to make it deeper.

Blessings!