Friday, September 14, 2012

Focus

Lisa-Jo Baker's Five Minute Friday

Start.

Focus.

I have often times said that I have the attention span of a fruit fly. I flit around from thing to thing and then hover over what interests me, while usually eyeing thirty other things I need to get done. It is not an issue in terms of I have attention deficit disorder, but instead it is an I have three children, I homeschool and try to keep a house running type thing. There is always a million things to do, but never a million minutes to do them in.

Sometimes late at night when I am fall into bed, right before the exhaustion takes over I think. I think about my children and if I have spoken their love language to them that day. Because even though their Daddy and I are crazy about them and love them more than any other earthly thing, if they do not know it, then it doesn't matter how we feel. The importance of parenting children is not just in how you feel towards them, but in how you communicate your love and compassion to them. If they do not get it, then it has all been for nothing.

Sometimes late at night when my thought drifts through the day my heart hurts. I was trying to get dinner ready, settle little one at the table with a craft to keep her from climbing and jumping off of stuff, I was wiping up the mess forgotten from snack and someone came to me. In tears. With something that broke their heart. As an adult it would not have even ruffled my feathers because I have a different perspective on life now at almost 36 than they do at their age. I lay there, tired to the bone, wishing I could go back five hours and give myself a good, swift kick in the rear to sit down for five minutes and give that child my focus. To draw them close and focus all that I am on them. Even just five minutes would have been better than the scattered crumbs of myself I offered.

Or how I reached for that book instead of my Bible in the DEAR time yesterday (drop everything and read time). Or how I rushed around while my sweet husband was home for lunch instead of just plopping down and enjoying his presence and my children's crazy enthusiasm that their Daddy was here.

When the day is done it can all be summed up in what did I give 100 percent of focus to? Usually there is very little that I can say I gave all that I had in that very moment to that one thing, instead it is well I was able to keep top number 3, 5, 10, and 25 spinning. But the racket you heard? That was all the rest crashing to the ground.

Focus. It is going to be my word that steers the ship of my year I do believe.

Stop.

3 comments:

  1. Great post. It serves as a good reminder to me to focus on the people in my life more than the things, or getting things done. Because their feelings do matter more than anything else. I had the opportunity to do that this morning. Put my computer aside, and talk with my husband for 20 minutes before the kids got up. Sometimes I would have been frustrated with the fact that he wanted to talk when I had uninterrupted 'me' time. But knowing that he was appreciating the time and my focus on him, made all the difference. And I've been doing the same with my kiddos lately, and doggonit, it feels good--for them AND me.

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  2. My husband have been gone for nearly four days and when I told my daughter it was TOO quiet in our house, she didn't remember what quiet sounded like. :)

    I do know how you feel, our finite body is always fighting the infinite number of things we need to do, or say, or BE!

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