Keeping up with the......

I'm not sure who our society thinks they're keeping up with these days. Surely, some are still trying to keep up with the Jones'. They want to have the nicest this, the best that, the most of those....greener grass, taller flowers, etc. You get the gist.

But then there's a whole other "keeping up with" that I have become more aware of. The drive to be BUSY! Whatever happened to down time? To family time? To not having every second of your life filled up? The contest to be the BUSIEST is definitely one that I do not want to win. I've tried to work on becoming a little less busy over the last couple of years. Somewhat hard when you have kids- but resigning from my job was a big leap of faith. But one that we knew was the best for our family. But busyness tries to follow me anyways and I have to start saying NO to some things.

Church or secular world, it's kind of looked upon as WOW/COOL if you have more than one job, are involved in multiple groups/activities, have something going on almost every night of the week, and oh ya.... you have a family somewhere in there, too. "Oh, do you know 'so and so'? They work 2 jobs, play this sport this night, go to that group this night, and have such a hectic life! They're amazing!". Since when do we want to praise that kind of lifestyle? Why is that something that we'd want to emulate?

Seriously, though, can one not have a fruitful life without being SO SO busy? What's the point?

Most of you know that I am a stay at home mom. I don't have a paid job. I don't bring in any money. Zero cents. So of course if I don't work I must just be sitting around all day watching soap operas and eating bon bons, right? And of course since I don't work I must have a LOT of free time to spend volunteering for this or that. Right? Um, no. (But that's another blog post...)

Life will always be busy, but there are definitely things we can do to gear our business in the right direction. If I worked full time...yes, we'd have more money. But I don't think Mateo will tell me when he's older..."Mom, I wish that you would've worked full time when I was a baby so I could have had those clothes I spit up on come from Baby Gap."

Then there are the working moms that get a little peaved at some of the things a SAHM might do....for example making baby food. "Oh that's nice, but I would never have time to do that because I work full time. I wish I had the time to do THAT". That's probably an accurate statement. I doubt they WOULD have time to. I'm sorry? But the only way I get to stay home is by doing those kind of things (which I do actually enjoy) that will save us oodles of money.
Living on half of your income does became a full time job. One that I have come to enjoy. I would not rather be doing anything else on any given day than taking care of and spending time with our sweet Mateo and taking care of his daddy...the guy I love.

I love taking care of my family. That is my ministry. When peoples remarks make me start to feel bad about having a strong heart for my family and home- I have to quickly snap out of it. Aaron tells me that he loves my heart for our family.

My favorite verse for being content with less and having simplicity is this one from Ecclesiastes 4:6........

⁶ Better one handful with tranquility
than two handfuls with toil
and chasing after the wind.


The more you work the more money you make but the more you work the more money you spend. Work more to spend more. Spend less to work less.