asking for help

The prompting today was to ask my husband for help. I was feeling myself losing emotional control, and so instead of playing the martyr or sacrificing the children to my emotions, I called him up and asked him to come home from the service he was doing. It turned out to be good timing for him to do that, and he was kind enough to take the kids swimming so I could get a nap.

Thanksgiving service

We acted on a prompting to get the family involved in a Thanksgiving service project. We helped to glean turnips for local food banks. There was lots of complaining beforehand and.my husband acted on his saygobedo to share some scriptures with the kids and discuss why we serve. They are gleaning again this Saturday in Riner if anyone is interested. I'm interested in going back because it was fun and good but my kids are saying they did their time. Lame.

an inspiring book

I finished a book last night that was very inspiring to me. So much that it led me to take some action and send some money - I don't do that after every book I read. In case you need a good pick-me-up it's called Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors.

I went over and visited with my elderly neighbors after feeling for several days that I should. We used to visit a couple of times a week, but it's been a few weeks, and it was good to get back over there. Knee surgery means they might not make it across town for Thanksgiving with family, so I'm keeping them in mind as I plan our very low-key Thanksgiving this year.

My "No" week

My Say Go Be Do this last Friday was to take this week off and focusing on my family.  So I took some time to think about what I needed to change in my schedule for the week and how I wanted to spend time with my family.
So, this week is going to be filled with some good old fashioned family time playing, working, talking and learning.
It will be my "No" week.  I give myself permission to say "no" to anything other than the needs of my family and home. 

Self care and Guilt

Today I followed the feeling that I should look up something called Golden milk to help treat the illness I am fighting. Someone had told me about it recently and it kept returning to my memory. So I looked it up, made some and it seems to be helping tremendously. I also made more of an effort than I have possibly in years to actually take it slow while I'm sick. Okay I still did stuff today but I did it much slower and listened to the low energy levels my body was telling me I had.

Recently I've been apprehensive about seeing someone in my family who became offended at a comment I made a year-and-a-half ago to her. When I found out months later that she was upset about it I made efforts to apologize but I never felt completely forgiven. I remembered that I had a saygobedo about a year ago to send flowers to her but I never followed it. I was feeling again like maybe I should go ahead and follow that now to try to ease tension before our family gets together for Thanksgiving. But before I ordered flowers I followed another Saygobedo to talk to my husband about it. While I had been thinking that flowers surely would be well received, my husband wisely pointed out that they could just bring up the old feelings again and be counter-productive. That caused me to remember something my mentor said to me about the same issue which was that most likely we would just have to pretend like it never happened and try to move on with good feelings , or at least cordial ones. After following my saygobedo to talk to my husband I decided not to send flowers and was glad that I talked to him. I no longer felt like I should send the flowers. Granted, I still wish I had sent them the first time I felt prompted. But I think the feeling that I should send them now was coming more from a feeling of guilt that I didn't send them the first time I felt prompted to and I just wanted to get rid of my guilt.

Nature Trip

I am watching my brother's two children for the weekend. When we finished mentor sessions and I saw the mess that was created while I was busy, the prompting was to leave it and just go outside. And although it took a while for 7 kids to get coats and shoes on, we enjoyed the trip to the pond in our neighborhood. It heals me every time. So many inspiring things in nature, and we do something new every time. This time the feature was floating downey goose feather boats and then trying to sink them with ground cherry chinese lanterns.

Also the prompting this morning was to not go running and instead brainstorm about how I could help fill kids' and husbands' needs. And that was helpful and it was nice and quiet to do that.

Foggy Brain

Today I am under the weather with a cold/cough. But not so under the weather that I couldn't push myself to clean. My vision for the day in the morning included restful activities and bonding with my kids. But the house was a wreck. I held our mentor sessions/school time, and lunch but instead of keeping the late afternoon restful I doggedly pushed through chores / clean up until dinner time. Before chores, I felt a repeated desire to go outside and enjoy the best part of the day while the sunshine is on our yard, but I kept saying - I will go out and rest in the sun after just a few more chores...until the sun was nearly gone from our yard. I went out finally but we got cold quickly and came back in. bummer. Then I felt I should lay down and rest and heat up simple leftovers for dinner.....but I cooked hamburger to go with our bean dip instead. Finally, I laid down for 10 minutes, which were peppered with giving kids instructions to clean up more. Then I felt I should put on uplifting music, and yay I actually followed that saygobedo right away. Sigh. This is hard. It's like I'm more inclined to just push through the plan / routine rather than have to step back and rethink my plans (much less listen for saygobedos). Like letting the house be dirty when you're sick... that's totally okay.