Time Wasted

I feel most people don't really live.  It is my opinion that very few people really live their lives as God intended.  This includes moms and wives.  How often do we just try to get through the day?  How many times do we just go about our work not really thinking about it?  I catch myself on auto-pilot quite a bit really, and I only just recently started catching myself because I'm now sensitive to it.

I want to choose to live deliberately, not just go through the motions, for going through the motions will rob precious time.  I don't want to be on my deathbed thinking, "I missed out" or "I could have done so much more with this life that God gave me."

 

I've heard it said that regret is not something productive.  However, if you have a regret I think it's productive to reflect some on it, to avoid making the same mistake over and over.  I believe Einstein said something like, the definition of insanity is to repeat the same action over and over.  I don't believe in kicking yourself for hours, but instead make a simple note of a mistake, understanding why it was made, then moving on until a similar situation arises.

I'm a "fix-it" person.  I'm the kinda woman who, once a mistake is made, goes into fix-it mode and likely comes out the other side on the other extreme.  Example:  My potatoes came out like glue due to too much milk.  Answer: I never put milk in mashed potatoes again; only butter.  Now, this is extreme.  However, this is the type of person I am, and my mashed potatoes never get milk in them.  This applies to anything Daniel brings to my attention, such as disrespect to him.  Example:  "You're cranky in the morning when you don't have coffee.  Answer:  I just won't get up and make coffee anymore.  Now this isn't a real answer, because this is something more important than mashed potatoes.  I need to be careful not to go from one extreme to another.  My solution is to keep my sighing to myself and do everything I can the night before to ensure I can just go in the kitchen and turn the coffee on.

All that said, mistakes do get made.  We hopefully learn what we were supposed to from them and go on living out our life with purpose, not wasting too much time on anger, self-pity, or apathy.  And this is important to remember.  Perhaps in our to-do list we could write down to think 10 happy thoughts a day, or maybe to watch what we say today and make sure it's positive things.  My son is bad about joking with the cat (yeah, the cat), but the things said are less than positive.  I think if he keeps doing this, negativity will spread to the rest of his day.

Living deliberately means cleaning our house with good thoughts in mind if we can.  I'm not perfect and I don't always bless my home.  Sometimes I just sigh going from one person's mess to another.  I will even leave the messes sometimes.  I do strive to live deliberately though.  I want to be like a child in that I don't want to sleep because I might miss something.  Every action should count, for it takes time.  We don't have a lot of time on this earth.  So, I shouldn't gripe that if I don't do the dishes they don't seem to get done...instead I'm trying to change my attitude. 

Nothing can make 3 months drag like having a colicky baby.  Before you know it though, that baby is sleeping through the night and it's all over.  Seventeen years down the road, you look back at that 3 months, and it was next to nothing...a glimpse...a tick in time and nothing more.

I guess I made this post to remind myself that life is short and I don't want to waste any of it, at all.  Even if that means I really need to crochet today to finish that blanket, but just don't want to.  Maybe I'll take my crochet outside on the last nice day of fall before winter truly sets in.  That way I'll make some progress and be happy, too.

I need to avoid wasting my time.  Sometimes we catch ourselves watching a movie that isn't really good, but isn't really bad either.  After the movie, I'm left with an empty feeling.  That feeling can usually be classified as time lost.  I wasted 2 hours of my day, of my life, that I won't get back.  I could have been doing something else.  Sitting at the kitchen table watching the birds with a cup of coffee would have been time better spent.