Fifty-Eight Quarters, a Two-Year Old, and Toys R Us

Recently, I wrote a post about how my son has been earning quarters from cleaning up his toys, how he takes his first earnings to his Sunday School class every week, and how he puts the rest in a savings jar.  You can read about it in The Giving Envelope and the Savings Jar post.

The question I've been waiting for finally came..."Mommy, can I buy a toy at the store?"  So, I decided to take him to this store:

I know.  I'm crazy.  But, it actually went very well.  Before we went, we counted his quarters in his savings jar.  Fifty-eight!  That's $14.50!  When I asked him if he wanted to buy a special toy with his commissions, he responded by saying, "Hahahaha!  THANK you!"  So, my husband, son, and I all set out for Toys R Us.

When we got there, there was only one question to ask:  Where is the Toy Story section?  My son's obsessed.  He was Sheriff Woody for Halloween, and he still wears his Sheriff Woody hat, holster, and boots around the house.  He constantly plays with his Buzz Lightyear action figure, Pizza Planet Lego truck, and Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads.  And the Toy Story movies are his absolute favorites, which get played for many Family Movie Nights in our house.  He told me that he wanted a Jesse and a Sheriff Woody riding Bullseye, but they were sold out of the smaller versions that he wanted.  We went out of our way to go to THE toy store of all toy stores, and they were sold out?  They had bigger versions, but they were ridiculously too big.  Try breaking that news to a two-year old.  Just as I was preparing myself to comfort a very disappointed little boy whose cute little bottom lip started to quiver with tears quietly welling up in his eyes, he saw this and got really excited:

It was a garbage truck, like in Toy Story 3, that came with a small Pizza Planet alien and a tiny Sheriff Woody that can drive the truck.  Suddenly, all was well with the world again, he wiped his own little tears away, and beamed from ear to ear.  It wasn't five seconds before we heard him say, "Can I have that?"

When we went to the check-out line, I was sure that the cashier was going to hate us since we were paying with quarters.  But she was very patient and sweet with him.  When we walked out of the store, my son carried the bag with the toy that he bought.  He couldn't have been more happy or more proud!  Neither could his mommy or daddy!

The Giving Envelope and the Savings Jar

As the name of this blog suggests, I've been on a journey to become more like the Proverbs 31 woman.  She was wise with her family's finances.

"She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard."--Proverbs 31:16 (NIV)

"She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night."--Proverbs 31:18 (NIV)

"She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy."--Proverbs 31:20 (NIV)

"She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies the merchants with sashes."--Proverbs 31:24 (NIV)

Learning to manage our family's finances wisely like the woman of noble character in Proverbs 31 is just one aspect that I have been working on lately.  As I blogged about in an earlier post called He Says, "Money". She Hears, "Glsnmickloqgtaypvx", I am trying to learn more about managing finances wisely through a course called Financial Peace University.

In Financial Peace University my husband and I have been learning that it is important to teach our son about spending money wisely while staying within a budget, the importance of saving money, and above all else, the value of giving money away.  John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was wise when he said to earn all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.  We don't want our son to make the same mistakes we have made.  Not only that, but we want him to learn at an early age that money is tied to working, and work ethic is important.  We want him to learn how to exercise self-discipline and save.  And most importantly, we want to teach him about the sacrifice of giving his first earnings to God and the church with a grateful and happy heart.

Dave Ramsey, the founder of Financial Peace University, suggests that parents pick a few chores that could be considered "work" for their children starting at around age three--work that could have a monetary value assigned to it.  He suggests not calling it an "allowance".  Rather, he suggests calling it a "commission".  Someone who works on commission doesn't get paid if he or she doesn't do the work.  If our son doesn't do his work, then he does not earn his money.  It's as simple as that.  So, we've taken this idea and tweaked it a bit to fit our 2 1/2 year old and our little family.

There are some chores that our son is expected to do simply because he is a member of the family.  Such chores include feeding our dog Sadie daily, putting his dirty clothes in his hamper at the end of the day, putting his shoes away in his shoe drawer daily, loading his clothes into the washing machine and transferring his clothes from the washer to the dryer when we do his laundry together, helping prepare his meals (taking things out of the pantry or refrigerator and putting them on the counter for preparation, stirring things), throwing away trash, putting recyclables into the recycling bin, and putting his books away in his book baskets in his bedroom after story time at night.  We'll add more age-appropriate chores as he gets older.  We picked one specific chore that would become his "work" in which he could earn commissions.  We picked the one that he has the hardest time with:  clean up time.  Our son is all boy.  He loves his toys, and he plays hard.  By the end of the day, he's had adventures with them all over the house, and boy, does it ever look that way!

So, here's what we do on a normal day.  When we have company over, we haven't figured out how to work it yet since he gets so distracted, there are a lot more toys out and about, and he seems disinterested.  But on a normal day when it's just us, this is how it works.  He gets one quarter when he completes clean-up time.  We clean up twice a day:  before nap time in the afternoon and before bedtime at night.  So, he has the potential to earn 50 cents in a day.  He spends the night with his grandmother once a week and spends the next day with her until dinner time, so he does not get a chance to earn commissions on that night and during the afternoon of the next day.  So, in one week it is possible for him to earn a total of $3.00. 

How We Do It:
1.  He must clean up on his own.  He is the one doing the work--not Mommy and Daddy (on a normal day).
2.  We direct him.  He's a little too young to stay focused and on task by himself, and he sometimes gets overwhelmed by all the things on the floor that he has to clean up.  So my husband or I will tell him what to pick up.  For example, we'll tell him we see toy trains on the ground and that he needs to find all the toy trains and put them away before we clean up anything else.
3.  He needs to stay on task.  If he decides he wants to start playing with the things he is picking up, then we remind him that the consequence of that choice will be that he will not earn the quarter.  We show him the quarter so that he can see what he's working towards.  He knows that if he does not clean up, then Mommy or Daddy get to have that quarter instead of him.  He does not like it when we say this.  "No, that's my quarter!"
4.  As soon as he is done, we praise him, and give him the quarter immediately for him to put away.  He feels so proud.  Sometimes if he has made a big mess playing, he'll sigh deeply when he's done, like he's saying, "Whew.  That was hard work."

Where does his money go?

The first two clean-up times of the week (both on Sunday, assuming that he completes his work), the quarters go in the Giving Envelope.  Not only is this roughly about 15% of his earnings for the week, but it is also his very first earnings of the week--his first fruits.  This is just a small manila office envelope in which I wrote "Give" on the front as well as a few scriptures.

"Honor God with everything you own.  Give him the first and the best."--Proverbs 3:9-10 (from The Message Bible)

"God loves it when the giver delights in the giving."--2 Corinthians 9:7b (from The Message Bible)

I drew a picture of a church on the back, and I wrote a scripture on it as well:

"Bring the finest of the first fruits of your produce to the house of your God."--Exodus 34:26 (from The Message Bible)

On Sunday mornings when we go to church, he takes his little Giving Envelope to his Sunday School class with him, and he puts his two quarters that he has worked hard for in the offering basket.  It teaches him nothing about giving and sacrifice if we give him the money for the offering.  By putting in his own money that he has worked very hard for, he is learning about faithfulness, sacrifice, integrity, and that giving is important and should be a priority before saving or spending.  His giving now has meaning to it.  God first.

After his first two times cleaning up in a week, the rest of his commissions get to go into the Savings Jar.  We have a piggy bank for him in his room, but Dave Ramsey suggests that you use something clear so that children can see how their earnings are growing.  I found an empty clear plastic canister with a plastic lid that was sitting in our laundry room unused.  I decorated it with the word "Save" on the front and drew pictures of toys, a scripture, and a picture of a little boy watering a plant that has dollar bills for branches.  I modge-podged the drawings onto the container and lid.  The scripture is "Is there anyone here who, planning to build a new house, doesn't first sit down and figure out the cost so you'll know if you can complete it?"--Luke 14:28 (from The Message Bible)

Now this is not a savings jar for a car one day or his clothes or anything like that.  We'll start that when he is in his teen years.  This is just a savings jar for a special little toy that he sees at the store that he really wants.  We'll find out how much it is and work towards saving that amount of money in his jar so that he can use his money to buy it.  This is not to say that we won't buy him toys also.  This is just a great starting point in teaching him that we have to work hard and plan for things we would like to have.  It's more about the teachable moment than anything else at this point.

It is working out so far.  We've been doing it for several weeks now.  Today we counted his quarters, and he has 36.  Most days when we tell him that it is clean-up time, he gets excited and says, "It's time to earn commissions!"  He likes seeing how there are more and more quarters adding up in his jar.  The first Sunday to take his Giving Envelope to church, he was actually the one that remembered it.  He told my husband that he needed to get his commissions to take to the church.  I love that he has a joyful and grateful heart when giving.

There have been a few bumps in the road.  One evening he thought it would be fun to dump tons and tons of toys in his play tent--every single little car he owns, all the mega blocks, all the Jenga blocks, all the trio blocks, all the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head parts, every ball in the house, puzzle pieces...I'll just stop there.  You get the picture.  There were lots of tiny little toys everywhere in one big heap.  He did not like cleaning that up one bit.  But, I tried to turn that into a teachable moment:  the bigger mess you make, the harder it is to clean up, and if you don't clean up as you go, then you'll have to spend a lot of time cleaning up later.  Hopefully, he learned his lesson.  It was painful and tiring for both him and me.  I got so frustrated that I almost just told him to stop, but I didn't.  The end result was that he earned his quarter for his Giving Envelope and hopefully (Puh-leeeeeaaaase, God) learned not to make that big of a mess again.

Operation Regaining My Sanity...Ur, I Mean Operation Toy Organization

Boy, oh, boy if you could have seen my house before I created a toy organization system for my two year old son's toys, you would have looked at me like I was a crazy person.  Or you would have gone into sensory overload.  For those of you who did see it, I am sorry.  I'm glad that you didn't trip, fall, or have an anxiety attack from all the clutter closing in on you.  I swear, sometimes I felt like Sid from Toy Story when the toys were coming alive, closing in on him, and talking to him.

A few weekends ago, I just about had it with my son's toys being strewn everywhere around the house.  Our dog, Sadie, couldn't even run through the living room.  When I saw her slowly navigating her way through the maze of toys, I knew it was bad.  It was mad chaos, and my son was acting like it was mad chaos.  (Picture the kid from Home Alone aimlessly running through his house with his hands up in the air screaming, "Ahhhhhhhhh!")  

Proverbs 31:12 says regarding the wife of noble character's husband, "She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life."  Well, I also think this can be applied to the Proverbs 31 Woman's entire family as well, not just her husband.  The mad chaos of complete disorganization in our house was definitely not bringing good to our family.  Instead of bringing peace to our home, it was bringing a sense of chaos, stress, and anxiety--to everyone, even the dog for goodness sake!  I knew that if I was going to tackle this project of organizing the chaos, then I was going to need to do it well, with a grateful heart, and finish.  Proverbs 31:17 says about the wife of noble character, "She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks."  As a stay-at-home mom, maintaining a peaceful home IS my job.

So, I set out to tackle the chaos with vigor and strength!  I started an organization project, and I finished it.  The result?  A much happier little boy who has lots of different places to play in the house, a more creative little boy, a much calmer little boy while he's playing inside, a little boy who plays with a wider variety of toys because he can actually see what he has, a little boy who takes care of his toys better, and a house that doesn't look like a tornado went through it, which naturally leads to a MUCH happier and more sane mommy.

When I taught first grade, I had containers and organization boxes galore due to my obsession with having organized, neat, and functional learning centers for all my kiddos.  It was so much easier for them to learn and explore in functional and organized centers, and they seemed to enjoy learning when the learning centers were set up this way.  At the end of the 2008-2009 school year, which was my last year before becoming a stay-at-home mom, I packed up all my teaching stuff and just chunked it into the attic.  Well, the old saying is true:  out of sight, out of mind.  I started reading blogs about toy organization ideas, but I became easily frustrated because I didn't have the extra money to spend on organization tools.  Then I remembered I had organizational tools from my classroom already just sitting in my attic collecting dust!  They are all different colors, and they don't go with my house decor, but who cares.  The toys are organized now, clean-up time is going much better, my son plays better inside now, I got my house back, there is less stress in our house, and I have regained my sanity as a mom.

This is just a small glimpse of what my house looked like before Operation Regaining My Sanity began.  Oh, I meant to say Operation Toy Organization:

First I organized the toys that I wanted him to be able to get to on his own without permission into piles on the floor according to the following groups:

cars/trucks/air plane (smaller versions)
big cars/trucks/air plane (big enough to put action figures inside)
action figures
musical instruments
grocery store pretend play (cash register, play money, play groceries)
tools and toolbox
stacking train & parts
toy trains
train tracks
big train track items (signal house, bridges, etc.)
stuffed animals
Mr. & Mrs. Potato Heads and parts
magna doodles/leapfrog tablets
play technology (play computer/phone/flash light)
books
books that make noise or music
puzzles
board games (memory cards, matching games, etc.)
tiny random toys (tops, small squishy baseballs, bouncy balls, etc.)
mega blocks and trio-blocks
math manipulatives (dominoes, counters, sorting items, dice)
literacy manipulatives (letter tiles, magnetic letters/cookie sheet)
empty containers and boxes to play with (my son loves to put things in and out of things)
pretend dress-up
balls
race car ramps

Then I organized them into organization boxes/buckets/containers/bins, etc. that I got down from the attic.  For most of the bins, I took pictures of the toys that go inside in front of a white poster board.  I may print them out and tape them to the bins with clear packing tape.  I haven't decided yet.  My son already knows where the toys go, but this will help when we have other kids playing at our house, when we have a babysitter, or when any of the grandparents are here helping with clean-up time and my husband and I aren't around. We'll see.

I put some bins on the shelves in our living room.  There is a bin for:  books that make noise or music, cars, pretend grocery store stuff, action figures, stacking train and parts, and musical instruments overflow (the other instruments are in the big drum in front of the shelves).  His tool box is also on these shelves.  I put the bigger vehicles on their own shelf above those.  He can reach them all by himself.  My son calls this shelf "the parking lot".

I put some bins/baskets on the hearth of the fireplace in the living room.  There is one for magnadoodles/leapfrog tablet, trains, train tracks, and big train track items.  It looks like this:

 

I put some bins on the shelves in the sun room that is connected to our living room like this.  There are bins for math manipulatives, jenga blocks, legos, magnetic letters, and trio blocks.  His bag of megs blocks and his cookie sheet for playing with magnetic letters are also on these shelves.  I organized other toys in the sun room like this so that he can pull them in and out so that they are not in the walk way:

His play tent is also in the sunroom.

I put some toys in the dining room area as well.  Our dining room is not separate from our living room.  It's open, but there are definite areas.  The teacher in me just couldn't resist making a reading center or reading nook here.  My son always has had books in the living room and books in his room.  He loves, loves, loves to read (looking at the pictures and calling out the letters and sounds that he identifies, and saying the words by memory--not actually reading yet).  He has two book baskets by his dresser in his room that are full.  And he has always had the bottom bookshelf in the living room full of books.  But, the shelf in the living room was always a mess because it was hard for him to put the books back in the shelf once he got them off.  For example, this is what it used to look like when the books were on the shelf and before I put the books in baskets:

                   Books lined up on
                   the bottom shelf =
                   disaster ------------->



Since the book baskets work so well for him in his room, I found two old plastic crates that I used in my classroom to serve as book baskets for the dining room area to make it easier for him.  They're not attractive by any means, but they get the job done.  I moved the books to the backside of the couch (which is the divider to the living room and dining room area) and put his anywhere chair in between them (that he can pull out by himself and move to other places for other functions such as movie nights if he wants).  When he sits in the chair, he faces the big glass storm door to the front door and the windows in the dining room, so he gets lots of natural light.  He sits here and just reads and reads.  He loves it.  This is the reading center:

I made a puzzle center in the entry way near the dining room by the glass storm door.  Before organizing, we used to keep the puzzles stacked on the shelves in the living room, but they were not deep enough to hold them.  They fell a lot, and the pieces were always in different places because of this.  The result was that he just never played with his puzzles.  What a waste!

                
                       Unused
                       puzzles
                       stacked  ------>
                       on shelf










When giving Operation Toy Organization a go, I first had the puzzles on their sides in a long wicker basket.   This did not work for us because every time my son tried to get a puzzle out of the basket, the pieces would tumble out.  Then he would have to take out every single puzzle to get to the pieces in the bottom of the basket, which meant even more pieces were tumbling out.  I decided he needed to be able to slide the puzzles in and out easily so that the pieces would stay in tact while getting to the puzzle that he wanted.  This has worked beautifully.  It has also made clean up time much easier since tiny puzzle pieces aren't all over the floor or loose in a basket.  Next to the puzzle center is a small drawer unit that holds small balls, spinning tops, garanimal chain links, and the pieces to a plastic puzzle.  Here's the puzzle center and small drawer unit for tiny things:

In February I visited my old college roommate, Sara, for the weekend.  I got the idea of an activity table from her.  She's also an elementary school teacher turned stay-at-home mom, so I'm always looking to her to see how she's organizing her home.  She told me that she got hers at IKEA, and I was able to find one with her at IKEA just like it for only $7.99!  It's actually called a side table, but it works great as a kid's activity table.  It's the perfect size and height.  I have a couple of folding camp chairs that are kid-sized from my reading center in my old classroom, and I keep one at the activity table.  When we have friends over to play, we pull out the second chair and put it at the table.

My son builds Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head here, works puzzles, reads books, colors, plays with play-dough, plays with his magna doodles, lines up his cars, stacks dominoes, sorts items, and much more at this activity table.  Basically, however he can think of to use it, he does.  I put some stacking bins from my old classroom next to it to hold his Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head parts and his play technology toys.

Operation Toy Organization complete!  AND it only cost me $7.99!

The Family Table: More Than Just Wood and Screws?

Bringing the family together...what could be more important?  The people who I look up to most in my faith are my mother and the pastor who was at my church when I was growing up.  He was and is a wonderful spiritual mentor and teacher to many, and I call him a dear friend.  As a youth struggling with balancing my priorities and letting stress take over my life, he would always remind me, "There's three things that matter:  your relationship with God, who you love, and who loves you."  It's as simple as that.  Has my life been reflecting these priorities lately?  Um, that would be a big fat no.  That is why I am on this journey to become a more faithful child of God, a more loving wife, a better mom, a more caring friend, and a more humble servant to the people in this world.  Going along with that, one of the goals that I mentioned in my last post is to bring my little family together by making family meals important in our home.  For the past few weeks, starting about one week before I started this blog, my family of three started sitting down together at the kitchen table to eat dinner.  What has transpired in the last few short weeks has amazed me.

Before starting on this journey, I'm embarrassed to say that I hardly ever sat down with my two and a half year old to eat.  While he was eating breakfast, he would sit in his high chair watching a t.v. show we had DVR-ed off of Nick Jr. or PBS Kids, and I would be working in the kitchen or sipping my coffee on the couch near the kitchen.  When he would finish, I would clean him up, let him down to play with his toys, fix my own breakfast, and then sit down in the living room to eat so that I could be in the same room as him.  Lunch looked similar.  He would eat his lunch, and I would work in the kitchen or the adjoining laundry room, or I would sit on the couch.  After I would put him down for a nap, I would eat my own lunch.  Dinner would be more of the same.  While he ate, I would either be cooking a separate dinner for my husband and I, I would be working in the kitchen, or I would be relaxing on the couch.  Another t.v. show would be on for him while he ate.  Once he went to bed, my husband and I would then sit down to eat our dinner--usually in front of the t.v. in the living room.  Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I think watching t.v is bad.  The shows that my son likes are educational, fun, and age-appropriate.  Watching t.v. with my husband is something that we love to do together once our son goes to bed.  We pause our shows and talk with one another, laugh, etc.  We don't just sit starring at the television., isolated from one another.  It's something we do with one another.  But, involving t.v. during mealtimes was a mistake for us.  It may work for other families, but for our particular family, it was making matters worse.  The t.v. on made each meal last 45 minutes to an hour, which meant that my son was watching at least three hours of t.v. a day--waaaaaaaaaay to much for his little impressionable, developing brain.  My son's mischievous behavior during meal times was escalating each week as well.  Throwing his milk cup on the floor, putting food on the table, dropping food on the floor on purpose, using his outside voice, being obstinate and strong-willed, and refusing to eat certain foods became commonplace.  I dreaded mealtimes because I knew it would be a battle each time.

In November we moved our son from the high chair to a booster seat at the kitchen table, in which he cannot see the t.v. at all.  This helped some, but not nearly enough.  In the past few weeks, however, we have gone a step further.  Well, it's actually more than a step.  It has been more like a leap forward.  The one place in the house that was designed to bring people together around it, we constantly kept buried.  We changed that.  The kitchen table is no longer a place to store the ever-increasing stack of unopened mail, my purse, our keys, my son's backpack, our jackets, and just stuff.  It now stays clean.  It serves one purpose, and one purpose only--a place to eat.  By using our family table as a place to store clutter, what were we saying about us as a family? What was that telling our son about how we view each other and about the importance of spending time with the people you love the most?

The table being a place where people come together is not a modern-day concept.  Huge, important, life-altering things happened at a table over 2,000 years ago.  Jesus spent his last night with his best friends in the entire world around a table.  He knew his fate.  He knew this would be the last night he would have to spend with this dear family of friends as a man on this earth.  He knew he was about to be betrayed and handed over to die an excruciating, drawn-out, tortuous death.  And where did he choose to spend the precious little time he had left with the people who had become like a family to him?  You guessed it--around a table.  He shared a meal with them celebrating the Passover, and during this meal around the table, he instituted Holy Communion, the Lord's Supper for the first time that night.  Since that sacred night, the table has been a powerful symbol in the Christian faith.  The communion table has been a place where bodies of believers, families of Christ, brothers and sisters in the faith, have come together as communities to break bread together, collectively remembering what Christ has done for us.  So, why treat our family table as just a simple piece of stained wood with four legs attached to it with screws?  It could be so much more than that.  If we let it, what goes on at the family table could be huge, important, and life-altering, too.

So, that's what we have done:  we have made the family table an important place in our home, something much more than just a table.  It's become a place to come together as a family, to talk with one another, to laugh with one another, to pray with one another, to share a meal together, and to listen to one another.  It's become a place where we show each other that we value one another more than cleaning the kitchen, more than the television, more than checking facebook and email on our cell phones, more than cooking.  It's a place where we show each other that we matter.  It's become a symbol for family.  Now when my son eats breakfast, I sit down at the table with him with the t.v. off (or tuned to a music station), and I eat breakfast with him. I do the same for lunch.  I sit down with him--no t.v., no cell phone, no doing other stuff around the house.  Even if I occasionally wait to eat lunch once he is napping, I still sit down and drink something at the table with him, and I stay at the table as if I were eating.  For dinner, I have been cooking earlier in the day so that the meal I make for my husband and I can be ready by my son's dinner time around 6:30 p.m.  No more fixing two different meals.  Our son is eating what I make for the family as a whole.  Has this changed mealtimes for us?  Yes!  Are mealtimes still a battle?  No!  We have so much fun sitting together as a family.  We're finding out that our little two year old is a very funny kid, and he really enjoys making us laugh with his little sense of humor.  I'm finding that the time of day in which I laugh the most is at our family dinner time.  My son's meal time behavior, for the most part (he still is two and a half after all), has been pleasant, calm, joyful, and enjoyable.  He is even trying new foods more willingly!  He has tried everything that I have cooked in the last three weeks, and has liked much of it.  I think now he feels like his mommy and daddy are making time for him.  We're showing him that family matters.  There's no need for him to throw his milk, to scream, or to do any of those things that made me feel like I was about to lose it.  He gets plenty of positive attention, and he even has positive attention to dish out to us.  My husband and I also know so much more about each other's days because we are setting special time apart out of our busy lives to just focus on one another.  I've been amazed at what the family table has done for us.  I have to say that it is quickly becoming my favorite place in our home.  Thank God for our family table.

Why Set Goals for Myself?

I am hopeful, excited, and to be quite honest with you, nervous, to begin traveling down this path towards becoming more like the noble woman in Proverbs 31.  For a long time, this nervousness has been holding me back.  In the beginning I didn't recognize what it was that was keeping me in fear. Finally I realized that it was nervousness (of failing, of not being able to do it on my own, of looking foolish, of disappointing others, myself, and God, the list really can go on forever...).  Yet at first, and extending into a very long time after that, I fully didn't understand why I was even nervous in the first place.  Recently, however, God has been giving me insights into my past and into my soul, and I'm now more aware of why this paralyzing nervousness exists.

Deciding how and in what areas of my life I needed to grow used to come easily to me.  In high school, both in academics and in athletics, I excelled in setting goals, following through with them, evaluating and re-evaluating myself, and setting new goals again.  I pushed myself, and I always aimed to better myself.  I never tried to be the best.  I just tried to do and to be my best.  My very wise and beautiful mother instilled that into me at a very young age, and she always stressed that she would be proud of me no matter what.  So, growing up in my small southeast Texas town, my motto was:  Be the best student that I can be.  Be the best volleyball and softball player that I can be.  Be the best friend that I can be.  Be the best leader that I can be, and so on, and so on.  This was what I did.  It was who I was, and I'm ashamed to say that I had a hard time identifying with people who struggled with motivation.  (Yuck, how arrogant!)  Looking back I now understand why it was so easy for me to stay motivated.  How could one surrounded by such an amazing and altruistic support system not be motivated?  This was one of those "ah ha" moments in my life.  My motivation did not come from myself at all.  Rather, it came from very specific people who God purposefully placed in my life as a teenager:  amazing teachers who believed I was capable of doing great things one day (God bless Mrs. Roberts, Mrs. McBride, and Mr. Perryman), tough, no-nonsense coaches who pushed me to my limits, loving parents who always encouraged me, loyal friends who supported me, and a selfless pastor who invested his precious and valuable time to teach and nurture me in the faith.

Unfortunately, during my college years, in which I was away from my support system and comfort zone, I seemed to lose sight of how to set and achieve goals effectively.  Don't get me wrong; I didn't go crazy or anything like that.  In fact, it was quite the opposite.  It was in college that my heart burned even more for Christ.  I became extremely active at The Wesley Foundation Methodist Student Center at Texas A&M University.  I couldn't get enough of the worships, the deep bible studies, the small groups, the accountability, the crazy fun, the memorable trips, and the awesome friends.  I practically lived there.  I met my husband and some of my best friends there.  My parents even joked, and still do for that matter, that I majored in Wesley instead of in psychology.  Sure, my spiritual life was blooming.  I longed for authentic worship, I felt a part of a faith community, and I devoured the scriptures.  For the most part, I tried to let my spiritual growth affect my thoughts, my behavior, my attitude, and the words that came out of my mouth.  But I made a critical mistake:  I was not open to letting the spiritual growth permeate into other areas of my life, such as my seemingly ordinary and boring academic life.  Let me be clear.  When the Holy Spirit approached the flat, non-scenic, academic road of my life, I presented it with a hideous, bulky roadblock accompanied by a big, ugly, orange sign that read, "Detour".  During that time, instead of letting go so that my spiritual life could affect other areas of my life in positive and godly ways, it's as if I used my spiritual growth to replace the need to set and follow through with goals in other areas of my life.  I became unbalanced.  The result?  A very average, ho-hum college education.  I could have gotten so much more out of that experience.  I could have learned so much more.  To me my spiritual life and my academic life were two very separate things entirely.  Not only that, but I even thought, "Why should they have anything to do with the other?"  Behold, the idiot.

When you grow spiritually, it should not only be evident in your worship and in how you practice what Richard Foster in his book Celebration of Discipline calls your spiritual disciplines (prayer, meditation, studying scripture, fasting, etc.) , but it should be evident in every aspect of your life--no matter how mundane, worldly, and seemingly unimportant you think it might be.  I just didn't get that.  When graduate school finally rolled around, and also with my teaching career, it seemed easy to set and achieve goals again.  In graduate school, I knew that my future depended on it.  With so many cooperative study groups and projects, I also knew that other students were depending on me and the work that I put into it.  With teaching, I knew that I was standing on holy ground.  Being a part of children's lives in a positive way, impacting their hopes and dreams, loving them enough to set boundaries for them and discipline them, and spurring them on to do great things and to believe in themselves--that was sacred.  And I knew it.  I knew the stakes were high, and I knew what it would take of me to be the best graduate student and elementary school teacher that I could possibly be.  So I put in the time to make sure that I excelled.  I finally got it.  My professional goals and how I achieved them were closely intertwined with my journey of faith.  God was calling me to be in seminary, and God was calling me into the first grade classroom.  Therefore, the goals, how ever practical they may have been, held deep, significant, and spiritual meaning.

Now, I've come to a new chapter in my life--a chapter that began when my son was eleven months old.  I am now a stay-at-home mom.  More than anything in my life, I felt this calling the deepest.  Since becoming a stay-at-home mom, I have realized that I have been growing more spiritually again, which excites me.   When I first began to stay at home full time, I knew that calling involved spending more quality time with my son and husband, making them more of a priority, focusing on our family time together, nurturing my son spiritually, playing with him, having silly fun together, and teaching him social skills, his letters and numbers, and all sorts of other things --all the easy and fun things about being a stay-at-home mom.  That part of the calling was a no brainer.  Here's the sad part.  I never realized until recently that if being a stay-at-home mom is truly a calling from God for me, then I should embrace ALL aspects of being a stay-at-home mom as a calling--even the mundane, worldly, seemingly unimportant tasks that go along with being a stay-at-home mom that are not that fun at all.  Even those things are part of this calling.  Who am I to pick and choose what part of my calling to follow?  When I first realized this,  my prayers and struggles with God looked a little something like this, "Grocery shopping and cooking?  Really?  That has something to do with spiritual things?  All sitting down at the table to eat together as a family?  And, God, did you say eat without the t.v. on?  Maybe I'm hearing you wrong.  Surely, you don't care how hard I work to get my child to eat vegetables willingly?  Seriously, God?  This is intertwined into my relationship with you?  Getting our family on a budget, spending money wisely, and getting out of debt?  That is a part of my spiritual walk with you, Lord?  And come on.  Laundry?  Give me a break.  You've got to be kidding."  Once I finished throwing my temper tantrum, I accepted that the reality of the situation is that being a stay-at-home mom is my full-time job, my calling, and it's time to embrace all of it--not just the parts that I pick and choose.  My behavior would be like the Israelites choosing to skip the forty years of wandering in the desert.  No thank you, God.  Just please fast forward me straight to the promised land, the good stuff.  Thanks.  Now, saying that I need to view the every day, ordinary tasks of running a home as part of this calling is not to say that my husband doesn't cook, clean, spend time with our son, change diapers, do laundry, etc.  In our marriage we are equal partners.  But, lately, I have not been carrying my load when it comes to these ordinary tasks.  And when I do, I am not doing it out of a joyful heart and with a heart of a servant carrying out her divine calling.

So, what are my goals for 2011?  How do I plan on beginning on the path towards becoming like the godly wife and mother that Proverbs 31 speaks so highly of?

• Plan meals for one entire week at a time and grocery shop once a week for these meals.
• Cook at least 4-5 meals at home for my family per week.
• Get my son to try everything that I cook for a meal at least once, and get him to fully eat at least one thing that I cook each meal (It can be a main dish or a side, and it is acceptable to supplement with other food he likes.)
• Get my son to eat a variety and all of his vegetables at meal times.
• Have my son, my husband, and I all eating dinner at the same time, sitting down all together as a family at the table with the t.v off and no cell phones.  (Music is okay.)
• Sit down at the table with my son when he is eating breakfast and lunch, even if I am not eating.  I won't simply be in the kitchen doing other stuff while he is eating.
• Load and run the dishwasher at night before bed.
• Designate one day a week to doing multiple loads of laundry.
•  Try the local early childhood PTA. (This will be an outlet for me to socialize and learn from other stay-at-home moms and guest speakers as well as an opportunity for my son to have structured play time and activities with other children.)
• Be more committed to attending the weekly women's bible study at my church on Wednesdays.  (Make it to at least 24 sessions this year.  The bible study does not meet during the summer.)
• Try the MOM'S group at church that meets bi-monthly. (This will be another great outlet for me to fellowship with other moms, but in a Christian setting where we can learn from one another, encourage one another, grow spiritually with one another, and keep one another accountable.)
• Take part in at least one other various bible study at my church throughout the year (Crossing Point mini bible studies every three months, lent bible studies, advent bible studies, etc.)
• Teach my son his letter sounds and numbers in a more organized way.
• Join the weekly Christ-focused preschool group that my friends started.
• Nurture my son spiritually and creatively (through having him attend Sunday School and church, through taking part in the weekly Christ-focused preschool group together, and through nightly prayer time).
• Schedule at least one play date a week outside other weekly activities in which being with other children is a given.
• Set a reasonable family budget, stick to it, and use Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace concepts to learn how to spend money wisely so that we can begin to get our family out of some debt.

The Proverbs 31 Project runs much deeper than surface goals for me.  This, above all, will be a spiritual journey.  Yes, I have goals that are very practical concerning my development in my role as a mother and a wife.  Yes, I have goals concerning my household and my family's well-being as a whole.  And yes, I have goals concerning the educational, social, and physical development of my two year old son.  But all of these goals and the accomplishment of these goals spawn from a deeper yearning:  to personally grow spiritually as I carry out my calling to be a stay-at-home mom and to help my son, in turn, grow spiritually.  These are not things that I can "accomplish" or that I can do on my own.  God is the One who is the ultimate transformer.  It will not be me doing the work, but God doing the work through me.   So here I am, Lord, waiting to be transformed.