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We live in a hectic time where energy for the people depending on us can easily get to the bottom of our todo list. Especially our husbands. And especially making love.
But how do you prioritize? How do you make sure when this life is over and done with that you’ve been who were supposed to be, to the people you were responsible for?
As a wife and mother (of toddlers by the way 🙂 I too feel torn at times. I’m still learning. But there’s been a method that has worked for me and I wanted to share that with you. Not that you have to adopt all the strategies that are working for me, but that you might be inspired to create your own.
Here’s what I do yearly, monthly, weekly and daily to ensure I’m walking the straight and narrow with God before me. Believe it or not, it’s actually given me more rest than ever.
Transcript
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Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. This show where you hear from amazing and inspiring wives sharing their struggles, triumphs and advice for this journey called marriage. Here’s your host belah rose
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Haye, and welcome, thanks for joining today is all about prioritizing your life in order to enjoy peace. I think that God really cares about how much we schedule into our days and how much we schedule into our lives. Because I love a quote that says, the way we live our days is the way we live our lives. And I think that’s really true. So how do we schedule our days? How do we prioritize in order to make sure that we’re doing the things that are most important not only to ourselves, but to who we’re responsible for, and then to God. So let’s go ahead and dive in. In this show, I talk about some of my yearly, quarterly, weekly and daily commitments, things that I do on a regular basis, and then some things that I don’t do on purpose. So let’s go ahead and dive in.
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Okay, now, when you first of all, have ever listened to the podcast, you probably know at the end, it tells you that you know, this lovely lady’s voice comes on not mine. But there’s other lovely lady comes on and says, Live with wisdom, passion, and love might be different men live with wisdom, love and passion. And those were actually the three words that I came up with years ago, when I asked the question of a group of people. And it’s funny, because I hadn’t answered the question myself yet until I asked it, but I asked the group, if you could have three words on your tombstone, what would they be? And I guess I want to ask you the same question. If you have three words, for your life, that kind of culminated everything, what would those words be? Now the reason I had wisdom on there was because ultimately, I think, you know, knowing God is wisdom, right? It says, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So I say wisdom as my first point, love, because ultimately, love is what matters, right? That’s what we’ve learned. All throughout the Bible that God talks about. Love is what is ultimately the most important thing. And then passion. I think passion is just so important to give you energy and excitement for life. And we can infuse passion with our will. And I’ve learned that even in a recent season of my life is that sometimes it’s just by saying, I’m going to do something passionately. And that’s what you need to go forward. That is what you need just to get started to go for it. And obviously, in terms of your love life, in terms of making love to your husband, passion has to be infused, like you have to infuse your relationship with passion, you have to go for it, you have to decide you’re going to be a passionate lover. And I just encourage you to decide that more often than you have been before decide that you’re going to be passionate. So again, those are my three words, wisdom, love and passion. What are your three words, when you think about ultimately, ultimately, what your life could be about? Can you pick three words? Okay, so the next thing I do, basically, on a yearly basis, is a vision statement. Now, a vision statement is basically what you want your life to kind of be like, now I use a vision statement. Now, it’s a vision or mission statement. Actually, those are kind of interchangeable, but what I do is I look at each of the roles that I fill in my life, and I try to think through what is the kind of person I would want to be in that role. So first of all a wife. So I want to write out what what I want to be as a wife, what what does it matter to me to make sure that I have in the first and foremost Now obviously, as a wife, with dy Am I we’re talking about the real stuff. So I’m going to say making love has to be a high priority. That’s absolutely in my vision statement. I talk about you know, I want to be playful and exciting and friendly. We have a friendship with my husband, and I want to make sure that we have a A wonderfully passionate and comforting and vibrant sex life. And that’s part of my vision statement. Now, this is not something I would share with just anyone. But this is something that is really important. First and foremost, the second thing I have on there as being a mother. So what do I want to be a mother that the thing for me is character focused, I really want to be focused on my kids growing and developing character, and developing a God centered relationship, like they would see my relationship with God and want what I have. Another thing that I didn’t put first, but I really should have is my relationship with God. That’s in my vision statement where I talk about what I want my relationship with God to look like, ultimately, in my life. So this is something I think about yearly. But it’s something that spans my whole life. So a vision statement or mission statement for your whole life. But it’s updated yearly. So that’s why I said yearly.
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And then any other roles that I fill, I want to update that mission statement to include, you know, what, am I as a daughter? Or what am I as, as a friend, or as someone who volunteers with specific organizations? Also, what do I want my budget to be about? What do I want my finances to say about me. And so if you think about a mission statement, what you can do is you can ultimately think about what you’d want read for your eulogy. Honestly, just thinking through who you want to become who you want to leave as, like, what would you want people to remember you as? Okay, so that’s so we So so far, we’ve talked about the three words that you would ultimately want your life to kind of be about, we’ve talked about your vision or your mission statement. And then next, I want to talk about seasonal focus. Right? So I’ve talked about this book before, and I’ll talk about it again, it’s called essentialism. And it’s by a wonderful author. He’s actually a Christian. But he writes this mainly for the marketplace, people, business leaders, and that that is his audience. But I think we can learn so much from this book. So I want to just give a little shout out to essentialism. I’ll have it linked in the show notes. But if you think about your seasonal focus, right, so his the author of the book, I’m trying to think of his name, Greg McEwen, he basically says, you should take you know, three to four, chunk, three to four months, chunk of your life and kind of determine what that season is for you. And that’s ultimately what I do. Now that I’ve read his book, I do that on basically a quarterly basis, or sometimes I break the year up into thirds. And I just think through what my life is about in this season, because we’re not, we’re not called to everything in every season, we’re not called to be, you know, really focused on one thing in every season, right? So I think for me, it really helps for me to like dumb down my life and figure out what’s most priority right now. Because it’s changes, it’s different. And I think we need to have a way to determine what’s most important. So, you know, we talked just a moment ago about our mission statement. Now. Now, when you’re thinking about your season, this next three months of your life, you want to be making it a little less far reaching, you don’t want it to be everything that’s in your mission statement, but you want to think about what is most important right now. So for me for this last season, my most important focuses was number one, my health number two, my family. And number three, my work and work was not only my work as you know the what brings in money, but also work with dy M those, those were kind of at the lower priority really, because I needed to make sure that my health was first and foremost. And then secondly, because I wanted to make sure that my family was most priority in my life.
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So that was you know, that’s a seasonal focus. That’s something where I I’ve actually decided during this season, there are certain things I cannot focus on. And some things that I’ve actually had to really write out and figure out some things that I will not focus on in the season because it’s just too much. I just have too much on my plate. And so some things that I decided to cut out I don’t think God is asking me to do that thing, his church activities, we love our church. It’s a very welcoming place. If you don’t have a church, family or community of believers around you, I would say, please, please get involved in church, it’s just so important to your walk with God and your life. But for me for this season, it was just just too much for me to have in my plate, church activities, sometimes you just don’t have the grace to do everything all at once. You know, God gives us grace for some things, and he doesn’t for others. And that is wise, I think we need to accept limitations when they’re given to us when God says, no, no, we need to focus on X, Y, and Z right now, you don’t have the energy or the ability to do all these other things. First thing is first, right. Another thing that I didn’t have the grace to focus on was social media, I just had to really get off of just about all my social media, I haven’t been on social media in quite a while because I just don’t have the grace for it. And after I would post things, or I would, you know, look at other people’s statuses, or whatever, I noticed that I just wasn’t where God wanted me to be, I wasn’t in a mindset where I was productive, or encouraging of my family, or any of those things. And other thing that, you know, this, this was an easy one that I’ve let go a long time ago, but things like celebrity gossip, that is just totally outside of what I think about now, because it’s just I just don’t have the space for it. Other thing TV shows, you know, I, I have no idea what’s in vogue, or what’s interesting in terms of TV shows nowadays. A lot of you know, beauty things, I just I’ve let a lot of things go like I don’t wear earrings anymore. And I don’t even wear makeup that often. And I’ve decided to really trim my wardrobe down quite a lot, just because I don’t have the energy to do all those things. Now that again, is in this season, I just had to decide that those are, those are probably all good things, or some of them are good things are, but it’s just not my season. So I would encourage you, whatever your season you’re in, think about it as what is your essential focus? Where are you really trying to go in this season, and then trim the fat cut away the stuff that God has not given you the grace to go into. And again, I would just encourage you to embrace the commitment, embrace the limitations. So what you are embracing for that essential focus, and I encourage you to only pick three, really just try to dumb it down to three focuses in these next three or four months. But embrace those limitations. Because it’s always all of life is a given take, you spend some time here, you don’t spend time there, that’s just how it has to happen, because you can’t be everywhere at once. You know, this is the first
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generation really, that has so much options that has almost limitless opportunity to do things right. You can always be Skyping, you can always be pinging someone or emailing or texting. I mean, everyone is available to you at any moment. And so really, there are limitations you have to give yourself for you to actually accomplish what you need to accomplish. And I think God has a lot for us believers to accomplish. So we need to make sure we’re focused where we are not distracted by the things that the world or the enemy wants us to be distracted by. I think that’s very, very true. So one thing. So so just to recap what we’ve talked about, we’ve talked about the three words that you want just to kind of encompass your life if if that inspires you, feel free to look into that and figure that out for yourself and pray through that. The next thing is we talked about the mission statement. And that’s something that you’re going to look at yearly, and redefine and kind of understand God’s heart for your mission on this earth. And then the next piece is quarterly, you’re going to look at your your three essential focuses what’s most important during this season. And now let’s dumb it down to weekly. This has been something that our family has done on a weekly basis for about a little over a year and a half, maybe two years by now. But we call them rest days. And it’s a very biblical notion. I had actually came from our church, they really encouraged this but one day a week, we rest and it’s called our rest day and we do just what God did on On his seventh day after he did all of his work, he rested. And I tell you, it has been a life changer for us. You know, we just have decided that now right now in our family’s life, because of schedules and all, it’s Saturday, but Saturday is a day for us, we are just resting, we are Resting in God, we are resting of work, we don’t wake up at a certain time, now, we still have toddlers running around doing crazy things. So there is a certain amount of work to it, just living, you know, diapers still have to be changed and whatnot, it dinner still has to be made. But for the most part, I mean, we don’t accept invitations to do things that are not specifically restful, you know, we wake up late, or, or a lot of times, my husband lets me sleep in and he hangs out with the kids while I sleep in and then maybe he’ll take a nap later or whatever. We also try to make love on our rest days, just because it’s a good, it’s a good middle of the you know, it’s a good time to do it. Generally, you know, when the kids are sleeping, or whatever, and we can steal away. But it just makes sure that we’re making love on a consistent basis. And that that’s always like a good day to kind of schedule it. But I do encourage you to think through is there a possibility for you to do a rest day? Because ultimately, I mean, this summer, people went all over the place, you know, they went traveling and did all these things. And they come back and they’re like, Oh, what did you do? Did you have vacation this summer, and, and I would honestly like I feel like I’ve had vacation. But I just got a new job. And we’re still getting you know things with finances, we’re getting that settled, and we’re just, we’re doing exactly what we need to do. But I honestly feel like I’ve had a vacation every single week, because we have a rest day, every single week. So I just encourage you, it has been wonderful for us, it’s just been so good. I would encourage you to see about just trying it, try it one time and just say here’s a rest day, let’s let’s try to dedicate this to the Lord, and and rest and actually be still and know that God is God. And it takes trust, because you have to realize that after all of your working and striving and toiling for six days of the week, you have to trust that God is going to allow that to be enough. And then your seventh day you can rest. So it is it is trusting God it is trusting that he’s going to take care of you even if you rest for one day, a week.
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But yes, try it out at least once. And maybe you can start by doing once a month. And eventually you’ll get to weekly for a while we were doing Wednesdays because of my husband’s work schedule and whatnot. But whatever it is, whatever day just pick that day and rest. It’ll you know, the reason this show is with dy M is because I don’t think that we can really have wonderful refreshing marriages when we’re stressed and tight on time and tight on energy all the time. You know, we just can’t We can’t we have to say no to something so that we can say yes to the better things. And that’s what arrest a is about. It’s saying no to the things that are stressing you out. And for us we even I have a policy where I don’t check my phone. And, you know, so my husband rarely checks his phone anyway. So we were not distracted, we’re able to spend quality time as a family together, we’re able to just relax. It’s really wonderful. But again, it’s saying no to the right now no to the to this would be good right now. And yes to the This is best, this is better for our family and for what God wants to do through and in us. Now the last thing I do, I wanted to say daily, and it’s not quite daily, it’s about five days a week. But it’s something called the Miracle Morning. And it’s all about setting your day on the on the right track. It’s another book called Miracle Morning. And he basically says there’s a handful of disciplines that some of the most successful people in life have have used and so some of the disciplines are exercise, visualization, affirmations, silence What else reading and journaling. So those are kind of all the, the habits and so he kind of takes all six of those habits squishes them together and says give yourself one hour a day in the morning to do each of those so that you can kind of put your mind on the right track now I haven’t done it exactly that way but I do do my exercise. I do affirmations, I do visualization. And I do meditation. So like the silence piece of it.
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And then I read scripture, I do all all five of those just about every work morning. And I’m telling you what it really just puts your heart on the right. On the right zone. You know, I spend a lot of my time during my run, just talking to God and getting, getting his vision for my day, and just understanding what he wants for me today. And a couple of my affirmations are specifically God oriented. And like one is, you know, God has given me the grace to run. That’s what I say over and over again, when especially when I’m getting started. I’m like, oh, Lord, I don’t want to do this. But God has given me the grace to run, God has given me the grace to run. Another one I say is, today has divine purpose in it. And that just helps me to remember and realize that there is purpose in my day to day, God has made this on purpose he has written this day in his book, because it matters to him. So I just encourage you to get yourself a routine, you know, just maybe a little, this is a little inspiration for you to get a routine so that you are waking up refreshed every morning. And I encourage you, oh, I encourage you to get outside get outside, in the green, and the beauty and the nature and what God has created. And it just helps you to remember the screens and the things that we as humans do all the time. It’s so it’s so different than the way God set up this earth. He set up things to be incredibly beautiful, and incredibly detailed and incredibly complex and unique. And just breathtaking. If we take the time, to experience it, to really realize this is real, this is what God has made. And a lot of the things in our head and the things that we let ourselves think about during the day, stress us and make us all, you know, gnarled up on the inside. And that’s not the way God made us to be. He made us to be human beings, not human runnings and stressful, all this mess. So get yourself in a daily habit of recognizing God’s glory, God’s goodness, you know, Jesus woke up early in the morning to go be with God in in solitude, he did that. So I just encourage you, however you want to do this. But get with God daily, do some of these disciplines daily, so that you can enjoy what God wants you to enjoy in this earth. Another thing about the Miracle Morning is it really helps me get ready to present myself to the people that love me and care that I’m that are in my care, like my husband and my kids. I mean, those are the people that are most impacted by who I am on a daily basis. So I just encourage you to do a some kind of routine in the morning. So you get yourself into the mode that God wants you to be in for the people that depend on you to be in the right attitude to be in the right zone. Okay, so those are really the keys that I use to prioritize my life. And I hope that it encourages you not to do everything exactly the way that I do it. But so that you have a system so that you have some inspiration to say, well, if belah does it this way, well, maybe I could do it this way, or this way would work better for me or the way that I think. And so that’s really the ultimately the purpose of this show is to just give you a little bit of an insight into what I do. So that you can get your life in a space where you know that you’re living to the glory of God. And you’re doing it on not only yearly, quarterly, weekly, but also daily basis. All right. Well, thank you so much for listening, I hope and pray that You are encouraged to go there and go there, go out there and live your life in the way that God wants you to. And this is the way that I found that works for me. But however you need to prioritize your life and we all do. That’s not the question we have to prioritize our life otherwise, you know, the enemy is going to suck us dry from the time that we have and and we don’t want that. So I just encourage you to be intentional to you know, maybe you need to rewind this audio and pause it step by step and just write out in your journal your answers to each one of those items.
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But do that I just encourage you to do that. And not let this encouragement go and heated because old mately I think probably the worst emotion is regret, you know that we knew we should have done something at some point and we didn’t. And so I just encourage you to do what you need to do to make the boundaries you need to make and prioritize how you need to prioritize in order to enjoy peace, in order to serve your family, your husband the way that God wants you to, and to have the energy to do that. And to prioritize your love life as well. And I know you know, and I know that that takes a lot of energy. And so make sure you do that. Well, God best luck. God bless you. Thank you for joining. And I will talk to you next Tuesday. Next Tuesday. We’re going to be talking about this as well. But I’m I’m discussing even more in depth with a wonderful woman, Kimberly Ray, and it is a treat, I think you’re going to really love it. All right. Well, let’s talk next Tuesday. Bye.
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Thanks for joining. If you’ve been inspired by this show, would you help spread the word? If you take a moment to review and subscribe others can find us more easily. Find out how to delight your marriage.com forward slash iTunes. Until next time, live with love, wisdom and passion