Slow, It's the Way to Go
I was just reading the newest post at Simple Mom. It is on living slowly. In the post, the author asked readers to share what living slowly means to them and/or in what ways they practice this. After reading through the other comments I realized that living slow pretty much sums up my life.
This sounds totally crazy. I am a mother of six children, I homeschool them, and something is almost always "going on" around here, but that's it. Whatever is "going on" is doing so here, at home on the ranch. Sure there are days when we seem to be constantly on the road taking someone somwhere to do something, but every week isn't like that, just some.
As I read further and further down the long list of comments, I read as woman after woman shared of the longing to read, just for pleasure or the desire to cook from scratch or to hang laundry out to dry. The more I read, the more I knew, every woman out there is longing for and looking for my life:) What? You don't think so? OK, you're right. Not every woman wants to live where I live, nor does every woman want to be the mother of six of God's marvelous rewards. Every woman does want one thing though, time. Time to relax, time to breathe deep, time to savor the rewards they have been blessed with.
Once more a topic of thought has reached out and grabbed ahold of me. Yes, it has happened again:) Living slow. Simple, slow, intentional, are they the same or are they different? I'm not sure. One thing I do know is that whether they are different ways of describing the same or they differ from each other, all of them hold one requirement. All of them, simple, slow, intentional, involve choice. Each requires a decision be made. Neither simple, slow, or intentional just happen by chance.
My Beloved and I made a number of decisions early in our marriage. These decisions freed us from conflicts later on. Because the decisions had been made before, they became established matters of fact long before the issues they concerned were faced.
Just as we decided that divorce was not a word we would use in regards to our own marriage, we chose how busy our family would live. For our family, that looked like one activity or lesson per child at a time, period. No more, less was fine. If what was chosen would overlap with another choice, then one of the choices had to go away. End of story. One at a time. Decisions like this might look vastly different for other families. I am only sharing an example of ours.
Living simply, slowly, and intentionally is about making a choice, a decision, one that each of us must make. So, how about your family? How busy will you be? Will you make these decisions or will you just "go with the flow" and be swept along with the current of popular culture? Now that's a post all by itself. One I just might have to go think on.
This sounds totally crazy. I am a mother of six children, I homeschool them, and something is almost always "going on" around here, but that's it. Whatever is "going on" is doing so here, at home on the ranch. Sure there are days when we seem to be constantly on the road taking someone somwhere to do something, but every week isn't like that, just some.
As I read further and further down the long list of comments, I read as woman after woman shared of the longing to read, just for pleasure or the desire to cook from scratch or to hang laundry out to dry. The more I read, the more I knew, every woman out there is longing for and looking for my life:) What? You don't think so? OK, you're right. Not every woman wants to live where I live, nor does every woman want to be the mother of six of God's marvelous rewards. Every woman does want one thing though, time. Time to relax, time to breathe deep, time to savor the rewards they have been blessed with.
Once more a topic of thought has reached out and grabbed ahold of me. Yes, it has happened again:) Living slow. Simple, slow, intentional, are they the same or are they different? I'm not sure. One thing I do know is that whether they are different ways of describing the same or they differ from each other, all of them hold one requirement. All of them, simple, slow, intentional, involve choice. Each requires a decision be made. Neither simple, slow, or intentional just happen by chance.
My Beloved and I made a number of decisions early in our marriage. These decisions freed us from conflicts later on. Because the decisions had been made before, they became established matters of fact long before the issues they concerned were faced.
Just as we decided that divorce was not a word we would use in regards to our own marriage, we chose how busy our family would live. For our family, that looked like one activity or lesson per child at a time, period. No more, less was fine. If what was chosen would overlap with another choice, then one of the choices had to go away. End of story. One at a time. Decisions like this might look vastly different for other families. I am only sharing an example of ours.
Living simply, slowly, and intentionally is about making a choice, a decision, one that each of us must make. So, how about your family? How busy will you be? Will you make these decisions or will you just "go with the flow" and be swept along with the current of popular culture? Now that's a post all by itself. One I just might have to go think on.