Today Matters: Make the Most of Every Day

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Today Matters: Make the Most of Every Day

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Chapters

• 0:00 Transitioning from Working Mom to SAHM
• 15:43 Deciding What's Most Important
• 22:36 Taming the Chaos with a Daily Planner
• 32:18 Prayer

Transcript

Audrey: 1:13

Hello friends, welcome back to Grace From my Home. I'm so glad to be back here with you guys again this week. I hope that you're doing well. I hope that you're enjoying your summer. We are. We are certainly enjoying our summer.

Audrey: 1:29

My boys and my husband just got back from a trip where they went and visited my husband's brother, who lives about four hours away from us. They had a great time. They did all kinds of boy things Well, I should say men things without having to worry about me, and I was. I was okay with that Because I had some time here to clean some. I did do some cleaning and just put my thoughts on paper. I have to do that. It's kind of like a cleaning out of my mind that I have to do. Some people call it a brain dump, but sometimes I feel like everything is in my head and I'm holding all this stuff in my head and if I don't write it down I'm just going to explode or I'm going to miss something really important. So I did some of that some journaling, some writing, some planning, some thinking, some praying, and so they returned back and we're trying to get back into our summer routine, which is, of course, different than regular routine. You know time. You think you've got it figured out, everything changes, right. I'm taking some time off of the shop and trying to concentrate some on my home and trying to be here for these people who live in this house, who look to me for food and clothes and, hopefully, love and attention as well. So good summer.

Audrey: 2:54

I know things aren't going to stay this way for long. Soon my children will be back in school and I'll be trying to figure out what life is like without homeschooling for the first time in 12 years, but I know God is gracious and compassionate. I'm also working on some things for my podcast and for you guys, whoever is interested. Not being a homeschool mom next year opens up some possibilities, some time for me, and so I'm praying and thinking and planning. You know what kind of things do I want to invest my time in, and right here is a place where I want to invest some of that extra time that I hope to have next year. I have some ideas on some series that I want to do, even some Bible studies that I want to do, just some things that I'm thinking about mulling over, and so I'll share some of those with you in the upcoming weeks, just things that I'm working on and I'd like to hear from you.

Audrey: 3:55

Last week I told you about this new feature on Buzzsprout that you can send me fan mail, and it's right in the show notes. There's a link there that says send me a message, and I love that because y'all it makes it so easy for you guys to contact me. And I got another one this week. I got a message from Michelle in Myrtle Beach and it blessed me. It just blessed me that somebody close by was listening, because I'm in the same county as Myrtle Beach, so it was right down the road and I just I was so blessed to see that message, just a message of encouragement, saying hey, I'm right here with you and I just want to do a shout out to Michelle and say thank you for taking the time to say hello. And I love the possibilities of this because I was thinking as I'm planning and I'm thinking about things to share with you guys.

Audrey: 4:44

I would love to hear from you what are things that you would like me to touch on? Are there any series that you would be interested in hearing or any topics that you want me to delve into? I had a listener who asked that I would do a series on parenting, and I'm working on that, just because it was in the back of my mind. But just her asking that was like, yeah, you need to do that, and so I'm working on that right now and it's in my mind right now, but I am working on it. It's mulling over in there and I'm thinking you know how am I going to approach it, but are there other topics that you would like me to hit on? Anything else that I've mentioned, anything that I mentioned in the past, and you thought, oh, I'd like to hear more about that. You know, some another listener had asked a while back about a series on marriage, which I would really enjoy doing. My husband and I went to a marriage retreat about two, three weeks ago and we've been married for 22 years now and that marriage retreat was like a wind in my sails. I thought, thank you, lord, thank you for this. I didn't even know I needed it, and so I would love to do a series on marriage.

Audrey: 5:53

But if you could just take a second and go to wherever you listen to my podcast, go to the show notes and look and see where it says fan mail and just send me a message, even if it's just saying hey, I'm out here listening, thanks, you know you got my ears. I would love to hear from you. I'd love to hear where you're from and what your name is and, and you know, if there's anything particular you'd like me to speak on, and just any prayer request. You know I pray for you guys and I will certainly pray if you send me any prayer request through fan mail and I'll give you a shout out here on the podcast, just so you're aware. The limitation with fan mail is that I cannot respond back to you unless you put your email address in there. Then I can. So just a few things about fan mail there.

Audrey: 6:49

Also, I want to encourage you. If this podcast has been a blessing to you, if it's ministered to you, I want to encourage you to consider supporting Grace for my Home. Also, in my show notes there's a link to buy me a coffee and you can go there. Click on that link, go there and you can do a one-time donation to Grace For my Home for any amount that you choose, or you can sign up for a monthly $5 membership and I set that up to give people an opportunity to sow back in if you've been blessed or ministered to by this podcast. I do this on my own. I don't have a crew, I don't have anybody else that helps me record or edit or publicize or anything like that, and so if you could support me, that would be huge because that way I can continue doing this kind of program and it would let me know that you find value in the things that I'm sharing. So I just encourage you, consider supporting Grace for my Home. You can go to the show notes under, buy me a coffee and support me either one time or on a monthly basis, and I would greatly appreciate that Today.

Audrey: 7:58

Today's podcast was inspired by a conversation that I had in church on Sunday. A young lady who I have known since she was probably two. She told me Sunday that she has recently become a stay-at-home mom and I did not know that she has a little girl who I think is four she might be turning five soon, but she is the cutest, smartest little thing and she my friend. Recently she has become a stay-at-home mom and the Lord has blessed her with that opportunity. But she told me Sunday that for a month now she's been a stay-at-home mom and the Lord has blessed her with that opportunity. But she told me Sunday that for a month now she's been a stay-at-home mom and as we were talking I could tell you know, she's kind of. She's so new at it and she's like a deer in the headlights because, like me, she came from a very demanding job where she worked a lot more than 40 hours a week and now she's at home with this little one and everything looks different. And all of those feelings came back as I was talking to her. I thought I so understand where you're coming from, because it can throw you in a tailspin when you go from a world that is so focused on money and success and position to going home where you're trying to nurture hearts for Jesus. It is a different world and and I remember that contrast very clearly I don't in any way want to get into a discussion over stay-at-home moms versus working moms.

Audrey: 9:41

You know there's a big debate about that and I didn't realize that until I became a stay-at-home mom, I was at home with these little ones and it was so completely different than what I was used to. I got on the Internet looking for support, looking for to find somebody who had done this before who could give me some wisdom and point me in the right direction, and I found a whole community of people who were fighting back and forth with each other about which job was harder, which job was more godly, which job was right, and I don't need that in my life. I don't need any more controversy than necessary in my life, because I've been both, and I want to tell you, they're both very hard and they both have their own challenges, and the grass is not always greener on the other side, and the last thing that we, as moms, should be doing is knocking each other down or adding to mommy guilt, because there's enough of that out there. And the most important question is not which one is better, but which one is God calling me to right now, at this time in my life, because I prayed to be a stay-at-home mom. I prayed, lord, open the door, allow us to be able financially to do this, and it took a while. It took longer than I wanted it to, and then, when it happened, I really wondered if I had made a mistake, because it was a lot different than what I thought it was going to be, but I had prayed for it and I had quit my job and so I was determined. I got to figure out how to make this work, because I don't want to just endure, I want to enjoy this life. I want to enjoy this life. I want to enjoy this stay-at-home mom gig. So, like I said, I got online and I started looking for people who could encourage me, people who had not just survived but thrived in this new culture, in this new way.

Audrey: 11:49

And there's a couple of reasons or a couple of things that really made it hard for me in that transition. First of all, the feeling of being hidden. It felt like my life didn't really matter anymore. The world was going on without me. The world didn't need me. You know, I had this position that I had built up. I was the first salesperson in a new department and the company that I worked for I had helped build up that department. I was the senior salesperson after everybody else came aboard, and I had a certain amount of my self-confidence and my self-esteem and my self-worth was wrapped up in that job and I didn't even realize it until the job was gone.

Audrey: 12:37

But when I first came home, I felt so hidden. I felt like the world is just going on without me and does not need me, and that was hard at first. I will say that I grew to love that. I will say that I grew to love that that thing. That was so hard in the beginning. Now I crave that because I found that there's a lot of things going on at home that are even more important than the things that I thought were so important on my job. But I didn't see that at first.

Audrey: 13:10

The second thing was I lost my sense of structure. When you work for someone else, when you work for, especially a company that's very organized and structured and has systems and I did that's the kind of company I worked for. There was a lot of decisions I didn't have to make. They were made for me. My goals were made for me. They were set for me. There were company goals and my goals reflected those goals and my priorities were set for me and I wasn't.

Audrey: 13:42

When I come home, I wasn't always sure what the goal was and there was no accountability. You know, on my job I had a yearly review. I had a supervisor. I had no one to tell me you can't stay on the Internet all day. I had no one to tell me you really should cook better meals. It was all me. You know no one to say good job either. It was if I did something good, if I did something bad, if I did something questionable, if I did something bad, if I did something questionable, nobody was coming to say, hey, you need to straighten up there. It was all on me and I wasn't used to that.

Audrey: 14:22

I was accustomed to, you know, finding the system that I was in and adapting to it and I I was good, I was a good employee. I was the kind of employee you'd want to hire because I did not need a lot of supervision and but I worked well in that system. Also, in that system there were rewards for good work and I felt productive there. So that was the third thing there was. At home, I did not feel productive ever. Now, there were no system of rewards. You know, I worked, I come on my job. I was a salesperson and I was paid mostly by commissions and so if I worked hard, my paycheck reflected that.

Audrey: 15:12

Now, when I come home, no day ever felt productive, because I never could look back on the end of the day and say why did this, this? And that Most of my days felt like they were just one interruption after another and I couldn't judge if it was a good day. I didn't feel productive and so that was. That was a struggle for me. At first, it was hard for me to determine what a successful day looked like, and it was hard for me at first to figure out what is important and how do I want to structure my day.

Audrey: 15:43

Now, these things may not be hard for you at all. You might think, oh, that's easy for me, but I struggled in those areas because I wanted to not just be home and have dinner on the table and those things that you think about a stay-at-home mom doing. I wanted to create a home where my children felt secure and stable and I wanted to create a place where they could see Jesus in our home. And I wanted to create a place where they could see Jesus in our home and I wanted to create a place where it was normal and natural to talk about God and to talk to God and that there was love in our home. Those were the kind of things that I wanted to create for us. And so how do you do that when you've never had that, you've never lived in that kind of home? You're not even sure if it's possible, how do you create that kind of home? And so that's what I want to talk with you about today, and my hope, my prayer, is that some of these things will be applicable, no matter what your situation whether you are a stay-at-home mom, whether you are a grandmother, whether you are a mom who works outside of her home that some of the things that I'm going to share with you today would be helpful for you, and I could talk a lot longer than this podcast episode will allow about these things, but I want to start with how I set order in my home After I came through I guess you'd call it the fog of this new life and the deer in the headlights, which is how I saw my friend on Sunday.

Audrey: 17:26

It was kind of like, wow, this is different, this isn't what I expected it to be. After I came through that realization that this is what I'm going to do now, this is what my life is now I had to find a way to put things in order, and what helped me was to remember that today matters. Remember that today matters what I do today, what I say today, what I think today, what I read, what I eat. All of those things matter Because we can get into a place where it just feels like it doesn't matter. You know, today didn't really matter. It was a bad day. It didn't really matter. But was a bad day. It didn't really matter. But it does matter. Every day matters, and so I had to approach my day in that way that this is not a wasted day, even if it felt like my life was full of interruptions. I didn't get anything accomplished. At a minimum, hopefully, I showed my children that I'm here to meet their needs. I'm here to be a stable person in their life. I'm here to show them how to pray. If nothing else happened that day, then I'm here to do that.

Audrey: 18:49

I went through a health crisis not long after coming home, because I had never really taken care of me. I was young, my body was foolproof. I felt like Superwoman. I could stay up all night and then get up early and try to have devotion, and then, you know, I just had always been able to do that. And so, as I was getting older and my children were very demanding, like all children are, I realized that I was not filling my own cup and so I had nothing to pour from. And if I was going to do this for the long haul, and if I was going to do it with a good attitude and if I was going to do it well, I was going to have to start taking care of myself, whether I wanted to or not. You know, sometimes we have to take care of ourselves because we love other people. I did a podcast on that. If you want to go look that up and it's it's named something like that taking care of yourself so you can take care of those you love. You cannot even help those you love if you don't help yourself first. You cannot even help those you love if you don't help yourself first. And so I learned I had to learn that you know the food I ate mattered.

Audrey: 19:56

Drinking water mattered. The average human body is made up of 50 to 60 percent water. Water is needed for almost every chemical reaction in our bodies. But I could go all day and not drink, not even think about drinking water, but at the same time I'm pumping my body full of coffee, which I guess there's water in that right, but the caffeine would have me jittery and anxious and by the afternoon I was a mess. And also caffeine all day. Coffee all day dehydrates you. So not only was I not drinking water, but I was dehydrating myself by the coffee that replaced all of the water I should have been drinking. I'm not here to harp on water, but it was an issue.

Audrey: 20:46

But I didn't think it was an issue, see, because I had never needed to think about my own health and the things that my body needed, the things my mind needed, my spirit needed. I needed time with Jesus, just so I could be Christ-like. Just so I could be Christ-like. You know, we're not good in our own strength and our own ability. The only good in me is because Jesus lives in me, and I learned that through all my nasty attitudes and all my anger outbursts, that I just didn't even think I had an anger problem until I became a mom, and especially a stay-at-home mom, who was trapped it felt like, sometimes trapped at home all day with little ones who were very needy, and I was the only person who could meet my needs. They couldn't meet my needs, and so the first thing I did was what do I need to get through a day?

Audrey: 21:47

What does a good day look like to me If I had an ideal day? What would it look like If the perfect day? What would I do that morning? What would I do that afternoon? What would I do that night? Do that morning? What would I do that afternoon? What would I do that night? How would it flow? Those are the kind of things I started thinking about, because sometimes we want things to be better, but we don't really know what better is, and so we have to define for ourself what is better. Now I will tell you that I've never had that perfect day, but that doesn't mean that I don't need to know in my mind what I think a perfect day is or how I want my day to flow, because if I don't have an ideal in my mind, if I don't have a goal in my mind, then I'm wandering around aimlessly.

Audrey: 22:37

Proverbs 29, 18 says where there is no vision, the people perish. Another version says they cast off restraint. And the older I get, the more I understand that verse. Unless we have a vision of where we're going, unless we have a goal, a purpose, then we will not stay on track and we will wander around aimlessly and we won't do the hard things because we don't see that they're tied to the future that we want or the outcomes that we want. And so, having a vision of what, what do I want my days to look like Okay, I don't want them to look like they do now, but what if I had my choice? What would they look like?

Audrey: 23:25

And that helps to decide what to do with your day. You know what kind of things to add to your day, what kind of things to take away. What it is is you start to be accountable to yourself. You start not needing someone to tell you what is the most important things. You start to decide what the most important things are in your day and you start to structure your day that way, and that takes a long time to do, but it starts with the first step.

Audrey: 23:59

And so I put together a to-do list, and that to-do list grew into a planner, a daily planner that I created for myself. And at first I put everything in the kitchen sink on that daily planner and I found out very quickly that that overwhelmed me because I saw a million things. And so when you very quickly that that overwhelmed me because I saw a million things, and so when you look at a million things that you have to do each day at the beginning of the day. It just makes you want to, like, give up on the day before you've even started. And so I learned on this sheet I'm just going to put the most important things so I don't get overwhelmed, and then I'll have a morning routine that I'll write out for an ideal day, and I'll have an afternoon and an evening routine that I'll write out for the ideal day and then that way I can check off on my checklist. But then in the morning, the afternoon and the evening I can look at the things that I have on that list and see if they apply to that day.

Audrey: 25:07

That started helping me to get my day under control or to feel like at least I'm not just floating on the sea with no rudder and no anchor. You know, I am learning that I can't control everything, but the things I can control I'm going to control. And that helped me feel like I was getting. I was getting somewhere. You know, like I said, I never have and never will have the perfect day.

Audrey: 25:37

Things always change. Some days I'm just tired, some days you got to know when to put the list away. There's wisdom in that, but just having the plan gives you something to come back to when you get off track and to know when you're off track. If you don't have a plan, how do you know if you're on track or not for your goals? And so I just encourage you if you're struggling with your days, you need to think about this. Think all my days matter. Psalms 90, verse 12, says teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. And as we keep up with our days, as we tame our schedules, as we decide how we're going to live and what are the most important things for this day and every day, as we start to do that, we gain a heart of wisdom. And it is a work in progress. You know it's not.

Audrey: 26:42

I did not throw together the perfect plan and it just flow. There were still a lot of days that I felt disheveled, or it felt like there were days when I got nothing checked off of that list. But at least the next day I had a list, and it made me feel like my day is just as important as any other day, and my life right now is just as important as my life was before I left the workforce, and I'm giving my children the best. I'm giving them the best version of me. I'm not going to spend less time preparing and working and dedicating myself to my home than I did for my corporate job. And little by little, it made me a better person and made our home feel more secure, more organized, and it gave me that sense of purpose that, ok, we're moving in the right direction.

Audrey: 27:37

We might be moving at a at a snail's pace, but we're moving in the right direction and we're not running in the right direction. We might be moving at a snail's pace, but we're moving in the right direction and we're not running in the wrong direction. And there's wisdom in that, there's grace in that Even the smallest amount of progress gives you encouragement to keep going forward. If we can just see that today I'm not where I was yesterday, I'm a little closer to the goal, then that gives us the I'm a little closer to the goal, then that gives us the encouragement to keep on going towards the goal. Because it is like an avalanche, you know it starts small starts in small things, but they're not small things because they build on each other and the momentum builds If we can just point ourself, if we can find the right direction, point ourself in that direction and keep going towards it. Even when we fall, we get back up. Proverbs 24, 16 says for a righteous man may fall seven times, but he gets back up. None of these things are foolproof.

Audrey: 28:35

I never whipped everything into shape. There's never been a day that I can remember that I did everything on the list. But just having the list helped me to feel like I was not floating and that I had some control over my life. So, just as a recap, one of the first things I did was tell myself that today matters. I matter, my health, matters, the things I do, the things I say, the plans I make, the company I keep, the things I eat, the things I drink these things matter.

Audrey: 29:12

Then I sat down and thought my ideal day. What does it look like? What does it include? What does it not include? Now, if I could set it up perfectly, what would it look like? Then I made a list of the most important things. What are the most important things, the things I want to make sure I get in every day? What are the things that would be good to get in every day? And what would a good morning routine look like for me? Like, what are the first things I want to do when I get up, or what is the flow of my morning, how do I want it to look, how about my afternoon? How about my evening? So I put together a list of what I wanted my bedtime routine to look like.

Audrey: 29:51

Then I started putting things together on a daily planner the day before, which was very helpful. If you can do it the day before, it's extremely helpful because at night you can rest knowing at least I got a plan. Tomorrow. It may all fall apart, but right now I have a plan, and so I would plan my next day. I'd put in my appointments, any phone calls I needed to make, any emails I needed to send, and I would refine this process over time. I would even write things on my planner that others would probably think was very silly, but it reminded me it's my planner. Nobody else is going to see it right, it's your planner, but I would do things that would remind me to like speak life over my children. I'd put that on my planner so I'd see it every day and I'd remember, because I might remember to pick up the dry cleaning and I might remember to make to send a certain email. But are those the most important things. For me, the most important things were having that one-on-one time with my kids and making sure that I was speaking those things into their hearts, and so just by putting them on my calendar, it helped remind me to do them.

Audrey: 31:04

I want to leave you with just one more word of wisdom, or caution. I should say Don't use this as a tool to beat yourself up with. Okay, this is a tool to help you. These are tools to help you get your life in order and to make sure your days are running well. You don't need anything else to beat yourself with or to condemn yourself with. Right, this is to help you get out of those feelings of overwhelm that make you feel like I'm just not doing a good job. Well, don't use this as another example of look, I can't keep up with this, so I'm not doing a good job. This is a tool to help you. You've got to give yourself grace. You know God gives you grace. He knows that you're not perfect and you're not going to do everything perfect. And you know, if you are perfect, then you're most definitely listening to the wrong podcast, because I'm never going to obtain to the ideal that I see in my head. But if I give up on the ideal, then I have no reason to do better, and so these are things that have helped me.

Audrey: 32:19

I'm going to post for you on my blog, graceformyhomecom, and in the show notes, a link to the version of my daily planner that I use now. It's very simple and, like I said before, I keep it simple because I don't want to overwhelm myself. I know myself enough to know that complicated does not work for me and it just discourages me. So it's very simple. Maybe you don't need it, maybe you got your own routines and this is not necessary, but for you guys who could use that, I'm going to post that. I'll put a link in the show notes, I'll put it on my blog and I'll also post it to Facebook for you guys who follow me there, and I hope that it will be a blessing to you and a help. Don't forget to go to fan mail, send me a message, tell me how I'm doing, tell me what you need, ask questions, and if I can't answer the questions, I'll be honest with you and tell you I don't know, but those that I can, I will do my best to answer them for you.

Audrey: 33:22

Before we go, let me say a short prayer over you for the week, father.

Audrey: 33:26

I pray for myself and for these precious ladies who are listening to me this week. I ask you to help us as we grow. Help us as we grow spiritually. Help us as we grow. Help us as we grow spiritually. Help us as we grow in maturity. Help us, lord, not to be tossed to and fro by all of the things that are thrown at us each week, but, lord, help us to grab a hold and tame the chaos that tries to consume us. And, lord, help us to learn how to live where we are right now. God, we're. Maybe you know, maybe some ladies who are listening are trying to live by the systems that worked in a past place, but now they're in a new place and they need a new way of seeing things. Lord, I'm one of those women. Help us, lord, as we walk forward, to grow and change and, most of all, to grow closer to you and to love those you've put in our lives to love. We love you, lord. Thank you for all your grace, in Jesus' name, amen.