breakthrough

"how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."
- annie dillard

it's day two of week two of stay-at-home wife/soon-to-be mom life. and with day two comes this realization: if i envision and desire my life to be of a certain richness and fullness, what i do each day will directly affect how closely my life resembles that vision. or, if i don't want my life to be 75% checking email/silly pursuit of pleasure in ultimately unsatisfying activities and 25% human interaction/reading/walking/what i actually want to do, an individual day shouldn't look that way. i must add that i don't really like the word pleasure but used it because i'm talking about more than happiness, excitement, stimulation.. more the seeking of joy and deep well-being. does that make sense?

i'm going to make my mom a cd and send it in the mail to her.
i'm going to call jamie whose voice i haven't heard since sarah's wedding 3 months ago.
i'm going to read the books that i have wanted to read for years.

more importantly, i'm going to structure my days in a way that truly reflects the way i want my life to be structured.

last week at our weekly community group, i shared that i sense in this stage of pre-babe post-work life an anticipation for what God will do with this time. this morning i realized that there are certain ways for me to willingly crush/shmoosh/snuff this feeling of anticipation, namely allowing worry and anxiety to creep into my thoughts and pretending that compulsively seeking satisfaction in less-than satisfying pursuits is in fact satisfying. and/or floating through a day that had potential in a way that makes it lifeless.

i'm praying that i would discover this other better no-limits-hold-em (wait, that's poker) way to go about each day. and i don't think it necessarily involves facebook. at least not more than once a day. but that's more of an in-practice guideline rather than larger philosophy guideline.. which is what i'm talking about - the little things that make up the big thing! so the amount of facebook time does in fact matter. it matters a lot. and i want to consider that and remember that and decide based on that.

in desiring God (which i am finallllly going to read), john piper quotes c.s. lewis in his sermon, the weight of glory:
"indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too week. we are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. we are far too easily pleased."

i deeply desire to discover and mean to find out what this means in my day-to-day and larger life. i can't really at this point even give you a summary of what i think i'm going to find. i'll just have to let you know.

also, i realized today that in a very short time, our lives are going to be filled with baby things, becoming toddler things, becoming kid things, etc. our shower now contains our shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and face wash. it will soon have bath toys. we will soon have kid-friendly toothpaste. we will soon have a baby. very soon.

i'm so excited.

love.