Stepford wife challenge

Well I have finished my thirty day trial. 

To be honest I have been puttin off writing this. Not because I didn't learn and gain things from the experience. To be honest I don't know why. 

I think I started this trial because I wanted to have something to work towards, to feel like I was pushing myself to do something I could be proud of. 

I love my life, really I do.  All I've dreamed about since I was little is being a wife and mother....well now I am one, and even though this is the life I've always wanted, sometimes it feels dull. You need to spice it up. 

So I tried.

I don't know what I thought would come out of it. I knew I couldn't do everything, I knew I would fail. But I wanted to try.

So what have I learned. 

I have learned there is a difference between goals and desires. 

GOAL:     Something I want/ a purpose or objective to which I am unalterably commuted to accomplishing that I can achieve all by myself. I can do it and do it alone.

Desire: subjectively feels like something I want, that needs someone else's cooperation in order to accomplish it.

That is the most valuable thing I have learned. 

Why??? 

I had been mixing up my goals and desires. It causes me stress, heartbreak, and just everything awful. So getting those in perspective has changed the way I look...at everything. 

My marriage: 

Desires: To have a marriage where I give my love and have love returned to me. To have my husband take the role as the head of our house. To be partners in parenting and life. To be Madly in love. 

These are all nice desires. Some how though I let them make the shift from desire to goals. And if they weren't met, or if my husband didn't meet them I was angry, felt like a failure and so on. 

So I changed my thinking.

What is it I can do? 

Goals: Give love unconditionally to my husband. Let go of my control issues and let him be the head of the house. Actively seek ways to date.

I learned this because I tried. For a month I tried to be perfect...I guess in my mind I thought that my family would respond perfectly too. 

I was so so wrong, and I'm so glad they didn't. 

In my Parenting

Desires: Well behaved kids. Kind children. God loving children. Close relationships with my children.

These desires also were ones that turned into goals. 

If I just did this right and this right I would get this result

I found I was doing it in every area, trying to have control over everything that infact I never had control over. 

Eye opening to say the least. 

There are a ton of things that I will be continuing to do that I have learned from this trial. They are just minor things like cooking or cleaning. I now, however I am going to go through each area of my life and separate my desires and goals. Give my desires to the Lord where they should be, and work my butt off at my goals in every area. 

Thankful for this trial. I am not the same person I was when I first started, I am a completely changed person. I would do it again in a heartbeat. 

Thanks for joining me. I hope I was able to inspire you. 

My horrible no good very bad day

Week: 2

Today was one of THOSE days....

Early, way to early this morning both my boys burst into my room screaming at the top of their lungs "Merry Christmas". I then had to inform them that Christmas is  weeks away and that just because their is snow on the ground does not mean it Christmas. 

6:30am crying children. Yelling, crying children. Yelling crying children wake up baby the glorious start to my day. 

As I attempted to peel myself out of bed everything in my body screamed stay in bed and hide!! 

I stumbled down the stairs to quickly make my husbands lunch and start breakfast for my kiddies. I made great yogurt parfaits with blackberries and raspberries and granola. In mind my I was thinking pretty and yummy. 

My kids, not so much.

"I don't want berries".

"I want cereal...but there is no milk"

Two full melt downs and it wasn't even 7:30am yet. Impressive right. 

As we went on with our day and started school. My oldest sat at the table crying because he couldn't make his "h's" perfect. I tried explaining to him that they don't need to be perfect he just has to try. I also told him that he'll get better the more he practises. I then grabbed an old picture (or what I thought was an old picture) from the shelf and said look at this picture you coloured last year, it wasn't very good and you didn't stay in the lines but now that you've practised and your great at colouring. He looks at me with big watery eyes and exclaims "I coloured that yesterday".

#BIGfatmomfail 

He proceeded to spend the next half hour in his room crying and refusing to speak to me because I said he was bad at colouring. 

My day went on and on like that.

I'm not even going to get into how the oven started on fire at supper when I was baking my homemade cheese scones. 

Yes, my day was one of THOSE days.

I felt like throwing in the towel. More specifically I felt like throwing on my sweat pants and giving in...to the call of my couch. 

This is the part where I'd like to say God burst through the clouds with a great new perspective for me. 

NOPE! That most definitely did not happen. 

When I was settling into bed that night my husband leaned over to kiss his weary wife. I gave him a quick peck on the lips and snuggled into bed. He did not want a quick peck, he wanted sometime with his wife. 

That's when it became clear to me. 

In my life with all my responsibilities I have . After hard awful days like this one. This is the first thing to go. One of the very things that breathes life into me. 

The intimate, romantic, hilarious life giving moments I spend with my husband. 

Im so busy trying to be a good mother, making sure my kids are getting very thing they need every bit of my time and love. Or trying to do my wifely duties like cooking, cleaning laundry ect. Or serving everywhere an anywhere. That the very first thing in my life to get cut is our date night. Or our time together. 

Every single night at the day is done my husband gets my scraps. He gets the left overs from whatever kind of day I had.

When did I forget that he is and will always be the single most important person in my life. 

You can tell what you love by where your time, money and energy is spent. 

My Husband has been getting left in the dust. 

The Holy Spirit really took hold of my heart after that challenging me. If I say he is the most important person in my life then I need to guard our time together with more protectiveness then ever. Because the reality is we do have young kids, most days I will feel exhausted at the end of the day and he will get my scraps. That is why it is so important for me to take a stand and move my husband back into the priority spot he was met to be. 

Because at the end of the day when our family thrives, when Garrett and I love each other right, put each other first we become a team when it comes to life. Especially parenting and when we work together the way God intended our house is happier, and so much more full of love. 

We'll played God, well played.

This is the next change coming to our family. Nothing gets in the way of "mommy and daddy time".