The Lifegiving Home Book Club (Week #3)
This week in The Lifegiving Home Book Club, we will be taking a look at lifegiving rhythms and routines. Home is your garden of life, so to speak, and you are free to order it and plant is as you will. But all great works of life must be planned in order to make the productive, useful, and flourishing. With a garden, the more ground that is planted, the more yield to the crop. Similarly, the greater care we take with planning our days and years, the more productive we will be. Great works of life art just don't happen. The must be imagined, planned, and worked on before they become a reality.
That's not to say all your plans will unfold the way you expect. Life happens. Things come up. Plans will need to be adjusted to fit new circumstances. But I have found that having a plan and looking ahead actually makes it easier, not harder, to roll with the punches and still keep more or less on course.
Making plans for a home, after all, does not mean that everyone will always cooperate or follow those plans perfectly. Sometimes, in fact, I used to wonder if the work of home building and investing in my children's lives made any difference whatsoever. Quarreling, selfish moments, and daily messes challenged my confidence that I was doing anything of particular importance. Yet now, I look back and see that the plans we followed, the rhythms we practiced day after day, eventually became the values that all of us embraced as a family. It didn't always seem like they were paying attention, but all of them breathed in the oxygen of our home ideals and have grown up to reflect the values we wanted to much to instill in them.
Your Reading Assignment
This week, you and I are going to read the chapter January (Creating a Framework for Home, p. 43) in The Lifegiving Home.
More from Life With Sally
After you read this week's reading assignment, hop over to the Life With Sally Forum (button below) to join the discussion for our book club! Here is what we will be thinking, discussing, and pondering over on the forum:
On page 49, I talk about how each year I make a new plan to simplify any “mind messes" to clean out my heart and thoughts. I do this by asking myself the following questions that I want you to ask yourself too: Do any of my relationships need any mending? Have I created any rifts between me and God that I need to clear up? Do I have any lingering feelings of guilt or resentment that I need to give to God?
On pages 52-57, I outline certain rhythm and routines that are important to me and my household like mealtime routines, household routines, the routine of a morning blessing, the reading-hour routine, and routines for closing the day. Is there any routine that you sense is missing in your home that you can implement like a daily tea time or devotional time to refresh yourself or a morning or closing routine to bless your family and your life together?
On page 45, I talk about how familiar rhythms and routines give structure that provide leadership and personal care to all who live in our homes. Download the Rhythms and Routines Journal above and think through the four questions listed in the journal. Which one resonates with you the most?