Social media has been abuzz this week with calls to action.  “We only need to sway 3 senators in order to change the results. Call this number to convince your senator to change their mind.”  “It’s your duty to march for your rights.”  “Whatever you said you would do during the humanitarian crises of the past doesn’t matter now, what you are doing now is what you would have done then.”  I have not called my senator.  Or marched for anyone’s rights.  But, I would just like to say that I am not doing nothing.

I am not doing nothing, because I am raising my son.  I am teaching him that there is right and there is wrong and they are absolutes and what he thinks is right or wrong does not change the reality.  I am raising him to say please and use his words and help when he can.  I am raising him in a world where his help, no matter how small, is valued, where women are important, where no person is of any less worth than another regardless of anything about them.  I am raising him to know and love his God who created him and who someday will give him the strength to love selflessly too, by following His example.  I am teaching him to vote and watch and learn, to be a good citizen in this country.  But more importantly, I am teaching him to be a good person who helps and loves and does good.

I won’t win any awards. I won’t be a national hero.  I won’t be on CNN.  I won’t change the whole world.  But, for this one, I will be the whole world, and I will change this one.

Today I had a chance to think about intentionality for 2017. I would like to focus on 4 areas of my life: my relationship with God, my marriage, parenting, and homemaking.  I am thinking about focusing on each area for a month at a time, over the course of the next year. That means that I will get to concentrate on each area 3 times.  In January I’m starting with homemaking, and specifically decluttering (which has nothing to do with the fact that I got a really sweet pegboard system for my craft room for Christmas today… and I have huge piles of junk preventing me from even entering the area… ahem…)  I’m reading a kindle book I downloaded a long time ago about organizing, which suggested starting with 15-20 minute increments.  For home office, it said to start with the papers on your desk.

All that was a long way of saying… just me, and the computer desk with its huge avalanche of stuff.  I started well, digging to the bottom of the paper stack in a record 4 minutes, and throwing a bunch of stuff that could be trash on the floor.  But then the system started to break down.  Because in order to throw that stuff away, I had to deal the with overflowing trash can under the sink.  Which then led me to the basement, where I found the pile of Christmas wrapping paper and boxes that we threw down the stairs and forgot about, and the garbage can that was still at the curb from trash pickup 2 days ago.  13 minutes later I finally made it back upstairs… to that original pile of stuff, sitting on the kitchen counter and waiting to be thrown away.

Apparently I have some character flaws to work through, in addition to a disorganized house.  Oooooh boy.