Another failure and a lesson learned

After several rather rough days, I'm happy to say that today was a good day.  And I think I know why.  As I stood in the kitchen at 3:00 this morning, warming up a bottle, I had a thought.  First thought was, "why is my baby awake right now?", but my other thought was much more profound.  Because of a deadline, I was working on my projects like a mad woman.  When I'm so focused like that, I can't focus on anything else.  It does no good to have a plan, or lists, or anything else because I won't look at it.  The house was a mess, we didn't have good filling dinners, we ate fast food a few times... my entire household organization went to pot.  I became frazzled from the pressure of the deadline, but especially from the feelings of failing in everything else.  As I stood here early this morning, I realized that my priorities had gotten all out of whack.  I was allowing a project, which is important, and it will get done, take precedence over everything else. 

Have you ever seen the little object lesson where you try to fit rocks, sand and water into one jar?  The lesson being that if you put things in the jar in the right order, everything will fit, but if you start with the small things, it just won't work.

So, first things first.  Feed my spirit, feed my marriage, feed my family (physically and spiritually).  I read a post today at Give a Girl a Fig about being spiritually thirsty, and I realized that I am too.  First on my list... study scriptures and pray with more meaning.

Feeding my marriage is second on the list.  Someone gave me great advice before I married my husband.  He said to make sure my relationship with my husband is a priority, right after my relationship with God.  It is easy to allow children to take over everything and monopolize your energy and time, but if the marriage relationship is kept strong and sound, so much the better for those children. 

Third comes the children and house.  I let it fall apart and the kids were crazy as a result.  Which then made me more crazy, and the cycle continues.

Then, comes the extras, the projects for Christmas, the activities, etc.  And, as a side note, I did make the deadline for my book project (the buy one get one free sale was ending that night) BUT, as I was drifting off to sleep, I was brought straight out of bed by suddenly remembering that I had been messing with the page order and hadn't fixed it before I submitted it!  Too late to cancel the order, too late for the sale.  So much for that great idea, huh?  We'll just add that to that "failure" list.  I'm okay about it though.  I needed more time to work on it anyway and I should have been smart enough to just let it go, but I didn't because that would have been too easy and I like to do things as difficult as possible.  Or so it seems.  I am excited about that book though.  I'll post more about that soon.