Off-Kilter: Praying My Way to Life Management

Time has an odd quality to it these days. My newborn is now two months old, and though it seems she's been here forever, I can hardly believe how April and May have disappeared. With many things being new, and other things being busy, we haven't really settled into a routine yet, and I am feeling slightly off kilter. There doesn't seem to be enough time in the day for what needs to get done.

Many aspects of life need balancing, and I'm not sure how to go about time management. Then again, it's not just time management, it's physical bodies and actual spaces and a thousand tactile things, not to mention my own brain. I need life management!

Maybe there's a blog or a book or a planner or a magic schedule that could figure this all out for me, but the trouble is, those things aren't personally invested in my life. Helpful as they may be, they don't know the needs of our family, won't step in and finish the dishes, or soothe the baby, or read to my kids, or dry my tears of weary frustration.

So it's June 1st, and I would really like to feel less dizzy this month, but how?

I had an idea late last night. Now, it could be the smooshy wishful thinking of baby brain. Or it might just be a lightning bolt from heaven. We'll have to see. But this is what I thought as the baby finally settled into the bassinet:

Maybe I can pray my way through this. 

Yes, there is always the "Help me God!" cry that I know never goes unheard. But I've written before about a habit of prayer, the kind of prayer that punctuates and permeates the whole day. Habit has the power to change things. And even more, God has the power to change life.

Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, many of my prayer habits have fallen by the wayside lately. I need to pick them back up. I'm not sure exactly how this will work with the flexibility that a young baby requires. But I'm going to put this thing to the test. Is a habit of daily prayer possible at this stage? And does it have the potential to bring order to my whole messy life?

What gives me hope is that I won't be entrusting my days to some nebulous idea of "time management." I'll be entrusting them to God himself. And I know he is definitely invested in my life. Ok, maybe he's not going to scrub the pots for me, but at least I can talk to him while I do it.

What if I counted my day by prayers instead of hours? What if I could find a greater rest beneath the busy moments? What if I could see the to-do list through His eyes? What if I prayed my way to life management?

I'm willing to try. And I'm hoping to write a bit about how it all goes here. We've all heard that prayer changes things, but maybe you're a mom with a new baby and scattered thoughts and laundry that is literally never done, and you're not sure. Or maybe you lead some other kind of busy or fragmented or stuffed-at-the-seams life, and you're not sure. Can it actually change the everyday? Can it bring order to chaos and meaning to mundane and space to breathe?

Let's try it.

~

To read more about my journey of prayer, click here. 





~lg