A post Lenten update

Well, as many of you know that I decided to give up yelling for Lent. I kind of thought I was crazy, but I really wanted to do it. I will say that the first week was the most difficult. I caught myself several times and slipped twice. After the first week passed, it definitely became easier.

It's about 2 weeks post Easter and have I started yelling again? Yes, I have yelled some. I can honestly say that the hardest week was the one immediately following Easter. I failed many times in that week. My trigger during that particular week seemed to be hormonal, which has always been one for me.

What have I done to eliminate/reduce yelling?

1. I stop and take a deep breath. It sounds silly, but sometimes just taking the time to breathe before you respond can totally change the way you respond to a situation.

2. I started eliminating stressors in my life. In my case, my stressors were directly related to be over committed. It hasn't happened overnight, but I'm prayerfully eliminating things.  Many of these things won't actually change until the next school year, but knowing change is around the corner has been helpful.

3. Making sure that I eat breakfast. I will admit that I am a horrible breakfast eater. I know that it is a terrible habit. I'm still not perfect on this one, but I know that low blood sugar and hunger are definite triggers for me. I'm also trying to add in a high protein snack during my mid day crash.

4. Trying to reduce my distractions AKA apple products. This is pretty hard because I try to keep my phone on me all day, so it is really easy to pick it up and start playing on Facebook or Instagram.  I love reading blogs and researching and having my iPhone at my fingertips makes it really easy to do just that. However, by not using it as much during the day, I don't snap at my children nearly as much.

5. Offer grace rather than anger. To myself. To others. Everyone deserves grace. Again, I'm nowhere near perfect, but it is a start. During that breath that I'm taking, I try to ask myself if I'm showing grace in my reaction.

6. Getting more sleep. Because I'm a night owl, I often stay up way too late. My burst of energy comes after dinner time. My kids aren't super early risers, but they usually wake up between 7:30-8:00 am. I'm making an effort to get in bed by 11:00pm and allow myself 8 hours of sleep.  When I'm awake until 2:00 am and waking 6 hours later, it catches up to me quickly. I can assure you that sleepyhead Alicia is grouchy and snarky. Also, the more I research, the more I think my sleep issues are hormonal...which brings me to my next point.

What else am I going to do?

I'm going to make some dietary changes. I had gone gluten free with my entire family last year and slowly started introducing it after about 6 months. I realize now that I really felt better when I wasn't consuming gluten. I'm also going to slowly cut out caffeine and sugar. This is going to be really difficult. I'm going to start in about two weeks, when I don't have as many early morning obligations. After doing some research, I think these three steps will help with my hormonal issues that cause so many mood swings for me. I have never officially been diagnosed with thyroid issues, but I have almost every single symptom of hypothyroidism and borderline TSH levels. I've been researching how to heal it with dietary changes and praying this will help the out of whack hormonal issues I deal with regularly. It also seems as if adrenal fatigue and hypothyroidism go hand in hand. Honestly, even if these are not issues, changing my diet won't hurt me at all. I don't expect this to be an easy change or a quick fix. I'm more focused on long term healing with these dietary changes.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

So there you have it. God really blessed me during this Lenten season. I truly feel that ending my Lenten journey with the Walk to Emmaus was such fabulous timing. It really gave me an opportunity to re-focus and re-prioritize. For my friends who dove into this challenge with me, I'd love to hear your feedback. What was hard for you? What changes did you make?

My own personal distractions

I had great intentions of being a regular blogger this summer. I had a plan of writing about distractions. Then life happened. In May, right before my 36th birthday, I was in a great deal of pain for nearly two weeks. I assumed I had kidney stones but a CT scan did not confirm that suspicion. My symptoms most  closely matched those of endometriosis, but the only way that can be accurately diagnosed is through an abdominal laparoscopy. Thankfully, I have not had nearly the amount of pain since May and have had no need to have anymore treatment.

Shortly after my abdominal and pelvic pain, I injured my knee. I have no idea what I did to it, but it hurt all of the time. If you know me well, you know that I have an incredibly high tolerance to pain. This pain was so bad, that I immediately called an orthopedic doctor. Ten years ago I had some knee issues, but weight loss helped tremendously. I went through a series of cortisone shots and nothing provided relief. A MRI showed what my doctor thought was a torn meniscus. My surgery was scheduled for July 10th.

Now if you know my family, you probably know that we decided to move this past summer. We had outgrown our home. We decided to move out and start working on our house to get it ready for the market. We moved into my mom's house, which is large enough for us each to have our own room. This was good on both ends - because my mom lives on a lot of land and since she has become a widow, it has been really difficult to upkeep the property. This moved literally dragged on for several months. We moved half of our things prior to my surgery. We didn't have the resources to hire movers, so we were doing most of it on our own. Remember that I have a bum knee. This is the greatest factor contributing to why it took us so long. We started moving the other half a few weeks after my surgery. Other than what is in our basement, we have most of it moved.

Of course when life happens, it happens. We had lots of unexpected financial things occur this past summer and limited resources to handle most of it. My van A/C stopped working. The A/C unit in our bonus room of our house stopped working. My surgery. You get the idea. We finally got in to see a developmental pediatrician for Harrison. We've been going through lots of tests so we can get a better idea of how to proceed with his treatment plan. Unfortunately some of it isn't covered by insurance, so we have to figure out how to make all of that work.

So the point in this story is to tell you that I've been distracted. I've been distracted with pain, injuries, surgery, moving, financial stress, treatment for Harrison, physical limitations due to my surgery, and our insanely busy schedule.

I've been a terrible friend. I have almost zero time for socializing. I've been a scrambled and scattered mess. I feel like I'm in a hamster wheel and I'm just running in circles. Things are looking up, but I feel like I've lost time. I wasn't able to enjoy my family as much this summer due to my physical limitations. I couldn't go on hikes or do many fun outdoorsy things. I can't seem to find my rhythm as far as homeschooling and school year schedules. I can't get our home organized and I can't stay on top of my housework. I'm going to be honest. I didn't handle the physical limitations well. I'm a terrible patient. I don't really follow doctor's orders. I do stupid things and pay for them by having days of pain afterwards. I've been grouchy. So incredibly grouchy. I am not myself.

In the midst of my very small storm, I have been blessed by some fabulous people. I have some dear friends who never let me sink. They know exactly when I need encouraging words, hugs, or the opportunity to cry. God has revealed Himself to me this summer in ways that I never quite knew Him. I really allowed myself to be vulnerable and see Him in new ways. I'm a huge believer in turning crappy circumstances in a way to bring glory to God and I can definitely say I have some new material after this summer. I also have friends who encourage me to write again. I had almost given up on blogging because I felt that I didn't really have anything to share. I am seriously a blessed woman when it comes to friends.

Proverbs 27:9 - The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense.

I held this scripture close to my heart as well. If you are blessed with godly friends, you are indeed a blessed person.

If you could learn anything from me and my experiences, here is what I'd like you to take from this. God never stops caring. Never. He was with me through every single bit of this. Not once did it feel hopeless. Well, if it felt hopeless, it didn't last more than a day. Scriptures tell us that the very hairs on our head are numbered. (Luke 12:7, Matthew 10:30) I mean if God knows how many hairs I have on my  head (and I shed a lot - so this number changes often),  He most definitely cares about my health issues, my finances, my stress level, and so on. Nothing is too small to take to God. We are never alone.

So all of those things have distracted me way too much this past summer. It was ridiculous. However, I'm done. I'm done allowing them to be distractions. I am ready to move on to my next chapter in life. I know that many of us have been there. It is okay to be there. But don't stay there. God has big plans for you and they aren't going to happen while you wallow in your own distractions. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Grow from your experience and move on. That is precisely what I'm doing.

Distracted - #1

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Ok here goes…

Exactly one week ago when I decided I was going to write, I went to bed with thoughts flying through my head. I mean, my head was just swimming with random thoughts. Now most nights I do go to bed with things on my mind, but I tune them out. Do you know how I do that? I pick up my phone and start by opening up Facebook to see what everyone else is doing. If that is boring enough, I will go to sleep. If not, I will move on to Instagram. Then sometimes Pinterest. Then I will look for a game to play until I am propping my eyes open with toothpicks. 

As I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, I heard a very loud thought. It said,

 “Alicia, STOP! It is okay to just fall asleep. You don’t have to be doing something. God created you to rest. It is okay to rest. That includes resting your mind.”

At that point, I laid my phone down and started praying. Then I heard another loud thought telling me that I needed to focus on getting rid of my distractions and that was going to be my writing venture.

So right then and there I committed to God that I would do this. My intent was to start first thing in the morning. I was going to log my phone usage. My beloved iphone is a huge distraction for me.  Here is the funny thing.  At one point in my life, I was anti smart phone. I was anti texting. I was anti most small electronics. In fact, if you tried to contact me, prior to my iphone, I probably didn’t have a clue where my phone was. We got our first smart phones in fall of 2009. We got blackberries. I didn’t really use mine as it was intended. It was a fancy way to text and I actually started texting a little bit more. I used my blackberry for texting, phone calls, Facebook and emailing. It still wasn’t a really big distraction. Fast forward to Valentines 2011. We upgraded to our iphones. I think Chris and I ignored each other for at least a week while we perfected the apps on our phones, played games, and put our lives on our iphones. We actually joke about it. Thankfully we got them at the same time.

 

Now I don’t think iphones are inherently bad. They are actually pretty nifty little things. I take way more pictures of my children because of it. I mean it is always right there by  my side and they are always being cute.  I rarely forget an appointment now because we have synced all of our information into our lovely color coded calendar – complete with reminders. And let’s be honest - it is nice to have google at your fingertips, especially with Harrison Holbrook as your child. That child is always asking questions that I don’t know how to answer. It does indeed have many good functions. But if I can’t go to sleep at night because I’m aimlessly playing on my phone when I should be trying to fall asleep, we’ve got a problem. A big problem.

Friends, I don’t want my children to have memories of a mother looking at her phone all day long. I don’t want my husband to feel like my phone is more important than what he has to tell me. I don’t want my friends to feel like all of my texts and phone notifications are more important than the time I’m spending with them.  I don’t want my phone replacing real face-to-face memories with the people whom I love the most.

I’ve been trying to keep track of my phone usage over the past week. I’ve also tried to make a point to not use it during meal times and to be more present when I’m spending time with my family.

I will leave you with some questions.

1.  How much time do you spend using your phone each day? (I’m sure there is an  app for it –haha!)

 2. How much of that time that you spend on your phone could you be doing something more fulfilling?

3. How much time do you spend on your phone when you could/should be resting?

Here are some challenges.

1.     Put your phone down at all meal times, even if you are alone.

2.     When you feel tempted to pick up your phone for idle down time, do something else instead.  (play with your child,  pet your dog, knit, crochet, read, journal, sit outside, exercise, etc)

3.     Block out a certain time of your day to respond to emails or to play on your phone. If you are not in that window of time, don’t grab it.

4.     Don’t take your phone to bed with you. (I actually use mine as an alarm, so I will be putting my on my nightstand.)

5.     Utilize the “Do Not Disturb” feature on your iphone. It can be found under settings.

6.     Turn off notifications that are not imperative. (Games, social media, etc).

7.     Put your phone away when you are visiting with another person. Give them your full attention. 

Peace out, friends. May you have a day full of life and memories. 

Distracted - Introduction

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I know that God has called me to write. I’ve been feeling it now for months. I ran from it for a bit, like I tend to do. I’m a runner. It’s okay. I’ll own it. I told Him that I wasn’t qualified. I don’t really write that well. I don’t have the proper credentials to write anything worth reading. My blog is just a hobby. Not that many people read my blog. I’m too busy. There is no way I am going to do more than blog once a month. But He told me to do it anyway. I guess you could say that I am sort of like Moses telling God that I’m not qualified. I’m certainly not saying that what I’m going to write is anything like what God called Moses to do, but you get my point. I am fortunate enough to have two people in my life who really encourage me. They encourage me to take big steps and to do bold things. These two people have helped me ignore my inner voice; who is also my worst critic. My inner voice has been telling me that I’m not capable of this.

I finally told God that I was willing to write. And guess what? Nothing happened! No ideas. None. I would just sit and stare at my computer screen. I would think of a few things, but they didn’t seem right. So I would just sit. And sit. Then one of my awesome encouragers brought me a book about writing. That night after about 6 chapters, I finally went to bed. As I was falling asleep, I had a very loud thought. I knew exactly what I was going to write about. This subject has been on my mind so much lately. It is going to be a huge journey for me. It isn’t an original topic, but that is okay because my journey is different. I am going to share my journey with you because I hope we can do this together. I pray that it helps you too.

Join me (indefinitely) as I blog through my journey of my distracted life and how to re-focus and minimalize my distractions. I absolutely crave a life of simplicity.  A life where I can lay down at night and fall asleep peacefully. A life where I awake in the morning and actually hear the birds sing, smell the coffee brewing, and see shapes in the clouds. I want a simple and fulfilling life. I have too much clutter in every aspect of my life to achieve the life I want. I don’t have the answers to any of these things yet, but I know God will show them to me. He will reveal Himself to me in many marvelous ways. My answers may not be your answers, but we can go through this journey together. You can share your answers with me and we can help each other. I’m really excited!