Faith

This week I was visiting my parents. My niece Michelle lives in the adjoining lot and she came over and we were all sitting in the backyard talking. Michelle loves to garden. Every year she plants and tends and harvests and cans fruits and vegetables. And she just happened to mention her apple trees.

She said that the apple trees they planted 3 years ago are doing well. And then she says, “They’ve been growing lots of apples and Eric (her husband) just knocked them all off this week.” I’m thinking, it’s June, why did he knock off all the growing apples? So I ask her.

She answers, “We were told that you are
Church in early motherhood is…

…taking the whole pew because your kids will end up taking it over anyway.

…snack crumbs and loud rustlings when opening the snack bag.

…crayons. Hot wheels. Books. More books. All the toys because their little bodies want to play.

…telling your kids to whisper just for them to shout back at you, “What did you say, mama?!”

Mama, can I be honest with you?
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I struggle to pray. I am easily distracted, also known as a person with attention deficit disorder. I also have four children ranging between the ages of 4 to 11 who take up about 98% of my time.

I’m also a perfectionist. It helps control my ADD tendencies with lists, timelines, and order. All of this to say, prayer is hard for me.

The perfectionist in me says it has to be done properly. Properly to me is that of Matthew 6:6 ~ But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
When I look back through my old Bible study journals, it gives me some feelings of guilt, and I cringe when I see the gaps in dates, some of them weeks or months long. There have been times in my life where I was very consistent with Bible reading. I would keep up the habit for several weeks, or even a few months at a time. But then something would happen to make me stop, and a habit, once broken, is hard to restart.

My problem was not busyness, or lack of time, but a lack of discipline.

Discipline is such a good thing. In order to create any new good habits, we need discipline.
There was a time in my life when it took me 20 minutes to walk a mile on the treadmill, and that was when I thought I was pushing myself. The first time I tried to do a push-up I face-planted on the floor. The first time I tried to make a budget I totally underestimated how much money I should set aside for gas and groceries. And then there was the time that I vowed to learn to eat healthy and then gagged on the vegetables I didn’t particularly care for.

All of these were things I thought I could just “start doing on Monday” and then excel at. As it turns out, I had to discipline myself to workout and eat healthy and make wise financial decisions.