Each of our families have a vision or mission statement, whether we have made it intentionally or not. How we spend our time and money, what we do, how we interact with the world and our neighbors, all of these things speak volumes about our values and priorities. Rather than throwing all of those things up in the air and letting them fall where they may, we engaged in this challenge to be absolutely intentional.
Month one was food, as many of you remember. Dave was an absolute rockstar, and I failed in 2 days flat...possibly a day and a half, but who's counting?! I like to think that I still "got it" that month though. The purpose was to use those hunger pains as a reminder to be present with God. Taking our minds off of menu planning and deciding what to eat gave us that push to dedicate our meal times to being with God. I continued to do that...for month one and beyond.
Years ago, I named this blog, and the description that I gave included a few words that have been critical to our lives. The first being "journey"...this is all a journey, and we are along for the ride. The second is "discerning God's will"...this is where we always wanted our family's mission and vision to begin. We believe that God created us and has a plan for us. We believe that following His plan is as close to heaven as we will get on earth. We can be very, very busy with "good" stuff, but if it is not the stuff that God has for us, then it is pointless. We end up running ourselves ragged and still frustrated that life is not what we want it to be.
Month one got our attention and our focus straight. It had to begin with our focus on God.
Month two was clothing...seven items of clothes for one month straight. I LOVED this month. I loved the tiny amount of laundry that it produced. I loved not having to decide what to wear. I loved not having to check that the kids were dressed appropriately. I LOVED having an excuse to wear my favorite sweatshirt every single day. I LOVED IT!
You know what? Not a single person, in the entire 30 days said anything to me, Dave or to any of the kids about us wearing the same clothes over and over. The kids teachers didn't ask, no one seemed to give me funny looks. It didn't matter one bit. I thought for sure we would have to do some explaining, but no one ever asked.
Following clothing came month three: eliminating "stuff" from our house, our bedrooms, our storage areas, our garage, everywhere! Again, a pretty fabulous month.
Aside from all that though, as month one cleared our minds to focus on God, months two and three gave us a physical clearing as we emptied our closets and house of so, so much unused, unneeded stuff. How ridiculous is it that having a full closet, and having a house full of junk for my kids brings me security? Please tell me I am not the only one. I feel like we are all alright as long as we have "stuff". Cleaning out our physical closets, again, brought our focus back to finding a true sense of security. It gave us space, helped us to make decisions based on practical need and not on emotional connection to "stuff". Anyone who has ever entered my Grandma Swanson's house will recognize how hard this was for me...it runs in the family. ;-)
Month four was media, and this month had the very greatest impact on us as a family. It's funny though. We really had to go through the other months in order to be ready for this one though. Dave and I had a focused vision on what this month would look like. Again, it wasn't about no TV, no electronics, no facebook...it was about making time for us to be engaged as a family. Not kids doing their thing and 2 busy parents doing their grown up stuff. It was about our family all being engaged in the same activity...and enjoying it. It was amazing. We truly made memories and were able to teach our kids some of our favorite games. Words can not explain how worth it that month of no media was. Our family was changed. Simply by moving all of the board games from a bedroom closet upstairs into the living room has made board games more of an option. There have been more than a handful of times since media month that I look around at the kids playing with Dave or me and I think to myself, "Yes. This is what I always wanted my family to be like. This is the vision that I had."
Month five decided to shoot for "7 acts of kindness every day". The kids each carried little notebooks to school with them and Dave and I each kept track of ways that we went out of our way to show kindness to someone. At dinner, we would all get to share our kindness stories. It was so fun to hear how the kids went looking for ways to be wonderful. A few times Chloe had forgotten to keep track during the day and found herself giving back rubs to the whole family just to "get her 7 done"!
When I told our small group that the theme for month 5 was Acts of Kindness, one dear friend, CoughAmandaCryerCoughCough, laughed at us...well, not really at us, but she did laugh. :) She said something like, "Really??The McMorrises need to come up with 7 acts of kindness. Don't you all live that already?"
And that is the moment when it all seemed to come full circle and I realized that we didn't need to jump right into a month six or seven. We do want to make at least "7 earth-friendly choices", that may come this spring when gardening and composting are easier to begin. But for now, God has grown us in amazing ways, and for that we will be thankful and we will rest.
It is when our vision and our mission for our family and our lives become the stuff of regular everyday life that we are living each moment intentionally in the center of God's will, and it is a blessed place to be for sure.
