MROL

Image by Lana Stewart via Flickr

I’ve finally finished the series about making your household notebook using the principles from the Mother’s Rule of Life book study. In case, you missed them, here they are:

1. Think & Gather
2. Building Schedules
3. Building Routines, Part 1
4. Building Routines, Part 2
5. Section 1 – Prayer
6. Section 2 – Personal
7. Section 3 – Partner
8. Section 4 – Parent
9. Section 5 – Provider

I’ve found that putting it together this way is the first time I’ve ever consistently used one.  I hope it works for you, too!

This post is linked to Life As Mom.

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Welcome to the final week of our Mother’s Rule of Life online book study.  If you are just joining us, you can view all the MROL online book study posts at any time as an independent study.  This week, we will be studying Chapters 9 & 10 – Getting Determined & The Heart of a Mother’s Rule.

The Getting Determined chapter spoke right to my heart.  As I mentioned when we started, motivation is my biggest struggle.  In this chapter, she emphasizes the fact that THIS is our vocation, THIS is our job and THIS is what we can do to glorify God.   We need to choose; to “grab our vocation by the horns and CONQUER it!”   We will never become good at it until we “choose, consciously and deliberately, to be true to our vocation.”

God doesn’t ask us to be successful, only faithful.

- Bl. Mother Theresa

In The Heart of a Mother’s Rule (chapter 10), I noticed something else that I’ve skipped over every other time I’ve read it.   Holly had shown her rule to her spiritual director and came away doing it in obedience to him.  Obedience gave her the strength to do the work.  Do you find that obedience has given you strength?  Or have you not tried it either ?   What do you think of that idea?   Who could you be obedient to?

I also found another thing to try to wrap my brain around.  I talked about making my tasks a form of active contemplation at the beginning and she discusses how once you get into a routine and everything is dealt with, you mind is not concerned with petty things and you can begin to HEAR God!   Isn’t that reason alone to work all these things out?!?

In the Appendix, Holly closes with her Spirit of a Mother’s Rule.  For right now, I have hers printed out (from the workbook) and I will be contemplating, as I build my rule and consider our family and our life & goals & callings, coming up with our own.

Thank you, ladies, for joining me on my little Mother’s Rule of Life journey.   It’s interesting because as I’ve written these posts, I’ve gotten more out of them than I ever have before.   Isn’t that the whole “8th habit” thing?   Anyway, I loved talking to you and reading your responses and thoughts.   Thank you again for joining me!

I’d also like to invite your feedback.   Would you like to see a follow up post in a few months to see how things are going?   Did you get a good start on what you wanted to accomplish?   What did you like?  Or dislike, for that matter?   Feel free to post in the comments or email me privately (jensteed.08ATgmailDOTcom).

And, if you are interested, starting on Monday, March 8, I will be starting a series on creating your own Household Notebook, based on the 5 P’s.  Please subscribe or check back to get some help in setting up and finalizing your Mother’s Rule at a nice relaxed pace.

God Bless!

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Hopefully, this series has been a useful one for you so far and I hope the week off gave you time to refine your thoughts and catch up, if necessary.  This week we are starting week seven of the Mother’s Rule of Life online book study.  If you are just jumping in, you can see the whole schedule & discussions here.

This week we are talking about Chapter 8 – Pulling It All Together.  In this chapter, Holly talks about how to take all your ideas, scribbles, thoughts and aspirations and put them into a schedule.  Several of them, actually.

This week, work on getting at least a daily schedule and maybe even a weekly schedule in place.     I think I’m going to extend this topic in the form of a series on building a Household Notebook following the 5 P’s as set forth in the book.   I’m thinking that I’m going to jump straight into that after we finish this up.   Let me know if you’d be interesting in joining me for that as well!

This week there isn’t much to discuss unless you would like to bounce questions off of each other or share your schedules.

Next week, we will finish off with Chapters 9 & 10, Getting Determined, and  The Heart of a Mother’s Rule, respectively.  We will also talk about the Appendix a bit.

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Welcome to Week 6 of our Mother’s Rule of Life online book study.   If you have missed previous weeks, you can find them all here.   This week we are reading and discussing Chapter 7 – The Fifth P: Provider.

The provider role covers all the other essentials that you are probably at least partially responsible for as the other head of the house — food, clothing, shelter, and financial responsibility.

It gave me a whole new way to look at housework.  On page 129, she considers it a manifestation of the creation of the earth.   God calls us to be good stewards of his creation and that INCLUDES the maintenance and cleaning of our homes & belongings.   I am not going to get into the whole “GREEN” thing because I think that as society touts it, it’s a load of bunk.  BUT as a Catholic/Christian, I believe we do need to be better stewards, whatever that may mean to you.

One of the girls I went to high school with has an AWESOME blog called Kitchen Stewardship.  Another awesome site is Keeper Of The Home.  She has an e-book called Healthy Homemaking that can help you improve your stewardship all over your house, not just the kitchen.   And you can always stop by here on Thursdays for my “Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make it Do or Do Without!” meme to get and share ideas & successes!

I only had two other things strike me as I read this chapter.   First was the quote:

I simply had to stop wanting so much stuff.

I had an epiphany about stuff last year as we spent 2 months in a 20 foot camper.  I just didn’t need so much.  I got rid of a full sized van full between a trip to goodwill, a yard sale and a clothing swap.   I never really considered the spiritual aspect of it, though, until I read this quote by St. Thomas Aquinas:

…by pampering ourselves, we superficially shelter ourselves from the realities of life, so when serious difficulties come, we’re unprepared spiritually to cope with them.

If you are using the workbook, this will be the time where you will find the most help.  There are TONS of worksheets for analyzing and planning all the facets of this role.   Also, be sure to answer the Working Out Essentials questions.  Keep in mind that this is such a wide sweeping role that it could take all year to work through each area!   In March, I will be doing a series on building a household notebook and sharing resources for that.   She recommends starting out with chore routines.   If you need some help getting started with that, try FlyLady.

For Discussion

What area do you find you struggle with most within this role?  Are you doing too much in an attempt to ‘do it all’?  Was there anything in this chapter that made you stop and think about how/why you do certain things?

Next week if is a free week to give you time to catch up and work through these 5 chapters.  In two weeks, we will be talking a little more about putting together your MROL.  Feel free to post on any and all discussions as you go back and fine-tune and/or review your progress!

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Welcome to Week 5 of our Mother’s Rule of Life online book study.   If you have missed previous weeks, you can find them all here.   This week we are reading and discussing Chapter 6 – The Fourth P: Parent.

This is one that is such an awesome responsibility that I don’t think ANYONE thinks they have a handle on it.  (If you are one of those, email me, I could use a mentor!).   I love Holly’s assertion that being is more important than doing.  I finally had to put hard breaks in my day.  I “do” first (prayer).  Then I “be”  (snuggle, eat, dress her, etc).  Then I “do” ( shower & put my slaves (dishwasher & washer/dryer) to work).  Then I “be” again.  I read, play, etc.   You know do-be-do-be-do .

ANYWAY, I love the reminder that my biggest contribution is “giving the world healthy, holy citizens to will spread their sphere of influence.”   It’s more important than anything else I do unless it’s for God or my hubby.   Even more important than work or hobbies.   And my hobbies are TIME. SUCKERS.  Twitter anyone?  Facebook?  Blogging?

I was also struck by the fact that we are called to recreate the garden of paradise by making our homes a place of beauty, peace and harmony.  I’ve always tried to make my home feel like that.  I was blessed to have our Best Man stay with us for a few weeks one summer and he actually told me that our house felt peaceful and homey (or something like that).   Ahhh.  Our homes should be a sanctuary of the family and a place to be a living witness.

Not only should our homes attempt to mimic the garden of eden (notice there was only ONE thing in the whole garden they should not touch; this is not an ideal magazine spread but something that WORKS for the family), but we should become a living witness!   We need to be an example.  A good example!  I am having such a time with this because my little two year old is turning into quite the parrot!  I’m so thankful that some of my prior bad behaviors are no longer habits and that she’s picking up some good things.  But I can see that I have much work to do on myself, which is why I’m doing this book study with you lovely ladies!

The last things I noticed were:

• What we ask our children to do must be based on a real, legitimate reason, on a real good for the benefit of the child, the parent and the common good of the family.
• Mommy means what she says AND IS WILLING TO ENFORCE IT (emphasis mine).
• Find a logical place for everything and teach this to your children.
• The heart of routine is natural progression.  x leads to y leads to z.

They were sort of self-explanatory so I didn’t think I needed to go on about them.  I’ve already been pretty wordy .   Go ahead and work through the Working out Essentials (and Beyond the Basics if this is a refresher for you).  If you are doing the workbook, do the corresponding pages.

For Discussion

How do you balance being and doing?   What do you consider your battles?   Any parenting “rules” that you don’t find to be worth the battle?   What items hit close to home for you while you were reading this chapter?

One final thought:   Mary is Mother.  And Mother is the personification of Love.

Next week, we’ll be discussing the 5th P – Provider.

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