Last weekend I had the amazing priviledge of accompanying my husband to a Time Out for Women event in San Antonio. TOFW is hosted by Deseret Book, the publishing arm of the LDS church. It's a great event for women to escape their sometimes mundane or demanding routines and have some time to refresh and be inspired by speakers and musicians. My husband was the invited singer for Friday night, and since I grew up in Texas and love San Antonio in particular, I decided to tag along.
I learned many things over the weekend which I would love to have the time to share. But in case I don't get the opportunity, I want to share at least one thing which is already making a huge difference in my life. The theme for this year's TOFW is "Choose to Become," and as attendees, we were asked to choose one thing that we could implement in our lives that would help us to get a little closer to the woman we are supposed to become. I have chosen to become a finisher.
That may seem like an odd or a simple thing, but it dawned on me this weekend that one of my biggest problems is I am not a finisher. I got this idea from a book I bought at the event about parenting. One of the chapters was about teaching our children how to be finishers. As I read, I suddenly realized, that is the reason I have a hard time keeping house. I don't finish tasks. I start a lot of things, like dishes, and meals, and projects, but I never quite fully finish them, which includes the clean-up part. I get distracted or burnt out or just lazy. If I am going to teach my children to be finishers, I have got to learn how to do it myself.
So not only am I doing the dishes, now, I am drying and putting them away and tucking the drainer under the sink. The counters and table are wiped, the chairs at the table are pushed in. I'm seeing this little lesson in every nook and cranny of my activities, now, and I'm realizing just how far-reaching this concept is. Not only do I need to finish my household tasks correctly, but I have to learn to finish my interactions with others correctly, finish keeping the commandments correctly, finish my life correctly. When I sweep up the last emotional bits and pieces of my life and tuck the broom away for the last time, I want to have that same satisfaction, knowing that I completed my assignment the right way, down to the very last step.
What a timely post. I just walked away from unfinished dishes to check the blog. He he. I think I need to become a finisher, too. Both in my homemaking and in my writing. Thanks for the reminder to complete my tasks. :)
ReplyDeleteWell there's no hope for me being a finisher in the household duties, but I am a tremendous finisher in other tasks. I think that's a fantastic goal - the satisfaction that comes from completing something really is amazing, and can make all the effort worthwhile (large and small).
ReplyDeleteAnd how delightful that your husband was the invited singer! :)
There are so many things to do anymore, it is good to 1) figure out what the most important things are, and 2) make sure they are finished. Clear counters and a happy family give you much more room to write without a guilty conscience. And what a great meassage for writers. One of the hardest things to do is finish a book, then REALLY finish it off by going back again and again until it's polished. Thanks for the great post, Rachel!
ReplyDeleteWow, you wanna know something funny, I totally thought I was writing this post on my personal blog! When I went to look for it this morning, it was nowhere to be found, so I Iooked at my browser's history, and saw I had actually been at the Cove! Since there are already comments, I guess I'll leave it here. Sorry it has so little to do with writing, but maybe it was meant to be seen by someone here. :)
ReplyDeleteGood to see some of your blogging work here, Rach! And yes, this definitely applies to writing. So many books are left unfinished, or even get submitted BEFORE they are finished.
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