Essentials for This Life

What are the essentials in your life? Besides the obvious...air, water, food. What do you consider YOUR essentials?

It takes me much longer to actually complete a book these days. And currently, I am only on page 34 of Greg McKeowns' book Essentialsm, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. It is already rocking my world. 34 whole pages in!!

This is our first summer in several years with a very skimpy plate.  No garden, the chickens are all dead, and the cows have all been sold.  So I'm just a regular working mom that gets to come home and love her family.  There is still house work to be done, meals to cook, fights to break up, a husband to love, oh, and a house to build! But I am ever so thankful and excited that this summer we have much less to do!

So leading up to Spring and Summer, I started to think and prepare.  What would I want my/our Summer to look like? Being the planner I am and having a wide open calendar, I started to brainstorm which led to Pinterest of course.  A Summer bucket list, weekly schedules, events at church, small groups, and no time for idleness or boredom.  Oh wait! Hold the bus.  I thought I was gonna have an easy free Summer!

So this takes me back to the book. Priorities. I had never thought of the word priority in a singular sense until I read this book.  We are so used to listing out our Top 5 or Top 10.  And being raised in church of course God is always number 1, right? 2.Husband 3.Kids.....and so on...am I right again? Or is this wrong?  Maybe our priorities have shifted to other things.  The word priority remained a singular word until the 1900's.  Its means the very first or prior thing.  When is it became plural, the term would now mean we have multiple "first" things.  So how can God, husband, kiddos, job, ministry, etc, all be first?   What a grand thought!

So back to Summer and my Priority! Love God. And when I Love God, I love people. By people, I mean my husband, my kiddos, my church, small group. etc.  God will direct my path and make it straight.  I don't have to have a bucket list of activities, a perfect vacation planned, a schedule, and serve at every event at church.

God is so gentle and good. And when I get so overwhelmed by my own brain, he gently nudges and reminds me that its all for His glory.

I hope your Summer is great!