My Daily Dozen: The Habit of Creativity

This year I began a blog series on my "daily dozen"--twelve habits that I use as the scaffolding of my life right now.   The first four (rest, eating well, exercise, fresh air) are habits of fostering good physical health.  The second group of four habits (Bible reading and prayer, spending time with my children, fostering my marriage, and prioritizing ideas) are related to relationships. The last four "daily dozen" habits that I use as the scaffolding of my life during this season have to do with discipline. So far I have written about the habit of doing daily chores and the related (but not the same!) habit of tidying. I realize that chores and tidying up are often considered mundane, but they do bring peace and ease to my days. 

The penultimate habit I want to write about today is the habit of creativity.   My original plan was to title this "The Habit of Writing," but I realized that's very specific to me, and it makes more sense to give a broader category here: the habit of creativity. 

Creativity is an essential aspect of being human.  Unfortunately too many of us think creativity is limited to people who get paid for their creations (famous artists, actors, or musicians). That's not true!  Life is full of opportunities for creative work.

Creative work isn't just painting, writing, or dancing.  It's also acting, flower arranging, entrepreneurship, cooking, dressing, woodworking, composing, sewing, decorating....and so much more. We each have the capacity for creative work in some field or another, and I think most of us have a general idea of what our favorite creative work is.  What was the thing you really loved to do as a child?  I have a friend who dreamed of being a Broadway star.  She still loves to act, dance, and sing.  I never swerved from my desire to write...I even wrote an entire book at the age of 12! I think looking back at childhood and thinking of the dreams and pastimes of those years is the best way to determine what types of creative endeavors to pursue now.  (You may have many--I used to design clothes and houses!  And to this day I love garments and architecture, although I'm neither a clothing designer or an architect.)

Although creative work is often associated with spontaneity, I have found over the years that the best approach to creativity is simply slow-and-steady daily discipline.  Numerous books have been written on this topic; for instance, Julia Cameron advocates writing morning pages every day to help any creative person get through a "block" (see The Artist's Way).  I have done that in the past, although I don't do it daily now.  In The War of Art Steven Pressfield makes the case that commitment to your creative endeavor is ultimately the most important facet of accomplishing creative goals. In The Creative Habit, renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp emphasizes the importance of discipline and habit for any creative person. I'm sure there are many more books out there on this subject, but what it all boils down to is this: if you want to do creative work, you have to work at it. Make it a habit!

What does this look like, in reality?

My first bit of advice is to live in the season you're in and don't wish it away.  Find little ways to be creative each day. One thing I like to do, even during  a busy spell, is arrange flowers for little bouquets. It can take a while or it can take 5 minutes, and my arrangements are usually the 5-minute variety.  You may love to cook and express creativity in meals (I don't! but I LOVE people who do).  Sometimes it's flower gardening. It can even be something as simple as making the family calendar look beautiful and artistic, or spending a few extra minutes each day choosing an interesting and creative outfit to wear. My favorite inspiration for this is Edith Schaeffer's classic The Hidden Art of Homemaking, which contains plenty of ways you can exercise your creative side while simply...making home! 






{a sweet and fancy Japan-themed snack table}

If you have more time and latitude for creativity, then commit to it more firmly. Discipline yourself to write three morning pages each day, or paint for half an hour every afternoon, or write two pages on your novel each morning before the children wake, etc. The key is commitment, which will get you going, and then habit takes over, and once habit is ingrained, the discipline is in place. 

It does take discipline, though.  And you will encounter resistance and obstacles.  Be prepared for that! Do your best to stick to the discipline no matter what happens.  Try it for a week.  Then a month. 

For me personally, writing is best done either early in the morning or late at night.  I try to avoid working on writing during the day, when I should be paying attention to my children and our household responsibilities. Because our current life situation is so challenging (my husband is undergoing cancer treatments), I don't have a super-predictable schedule.  But I'm still trying to write for half an hour or an hour most mornings *or* late evenings. I'm trying to include this as part of my scaffolding each day, and when I can't write for whatever reason, I still try to do something that is a little creative. Just to keep the habit going and keep sparking my interest! 

I encourage anyone and everyone to make creativity a regular habit, and if you need further inspiration, the books I've referenced here all make a fine place to start (I do have a caveat about Pressfield's book, but it's minor--I mention it here).

 I feel it's such an important habit and one that easily gets ignored, particularly when we are busy raising children and managing households.  So if you have any tips on making creativity a habit or struggles regarding daily creativity, feel free to share.

Next week I plan to write my very last Daily Dozen post. If you've missed any or want to read the habits posts I've written so far, you may find them here. Viva la habits! 

My Daily Dozen: The Habit of Tidying

This year I began a blog series on my "daily dozen"--twelve habits that I use as the scaffolding of my life right now.   The first four (rest, eating well, exercise, fresh air) are habits of fostering good physical health.  The second group of four habits (Bible reading and prayer, spending time with my children, fostering my marriage, and prioritizing ideas) are related to relationships.

The last four "daily dozen" habits that I use as the scaffolding of my life during this season have to do with discipline. Last Monday I wrote about the habit of doing daily chores. That's not an exciting habit, but I do consider it an essential discipline!  Today I'm going to write about something closely related: the habit of tidying. 

What is tidying? 

Tidying, according to my definition, is the act of bringing order.  So when I talk about tidying, I'm not just talking about picking up around the house, although it is clearly important to bring order to the house on a regular basis.  I'm also talking about tidying outdoor spaces (like the yard, garden, patio, porch).  And on a deeper level I mean tidying the schedule. 

On most days I can't tidy all of these things (the house and yard that are perfectly clean in every room every day is an unreachable goal in my season of life for sure), but every day I can do a bit of a tidy somewhere. I think if I can "tidy something" each day as a basic discipline of my life, I can generally maintain a sense of order in my home and in my mind. 

Tidying the House

Some of us love this task more than others.  My husband once came home when I had our closet all torn up and clothes across the bed and I was going through everything (mind you, I keep a small wardrobe to begin with) and he smiled and said, "you're really happy right now, aren't you?"

It's true. I love to tidy up.  I even tend to tidy therapeutically; the day my mother died unexpectedly in my arms, I went back to her house from the hospital and just began to tidy up.  I knew it seemed strange in the face of what had happened, but it was a stress-reliever. I did it because the house needed it, and I needed it, too. There are few things that thrill me more than taking a messy closet or drawer and imposing order upon the chaos.  

I know there are people who think people like me are crazy!

In spite of this love of tidying, I do not have a perfectly tidy home.  I live with three other people who do not share my deep joy of tidying up.  (Although my daughter shows potential.....) Imposing my standard of order on everyone else in this household would result in misery, so we just keep things reasonably neat.  And sometimes things are a complete mess!  (Our garage comes to mind.) This weekend I went through our schoolroom and organized it...and let me tell you, it was chaos down there for a few days! But not anymore.

My advice for beginners to tidying is to pick *one* spot in your house that you want to keep clutter-free and tidy, and simply focus on that each day.  That builds the habit, and once you have the habit, you've got momentum, and keeping certain spaces tidy won't feel so onerous anymore. 

Also note: "tidy" is a relative word. What is tidy to you? That's what you're going for. If you're the type of person who doesn't mind a stack of books on the coffee table and a little pile of papers on the buffet and a puzzle in progress on the end table, then fine!  Remember that it's about bringing order. Your home can be in order even if it doesn't look ready for a magazine shoot.

I personally love a Very Tidy space but also don't mind the Tangram game left out on the table for a few days or a few stuffed animals neatly gracing the sofa.  I'll straighten the pillows at night and maybe arrange the stuffed animals neatly, and that doesn't bother me a bit!

Tidying Outside

Sometimes I am so fixated on the inside of my house that I forget the outside. In winter this is no big deal, but in summer things get grimy and out of control very quickly.

Now, I'll be honest: when I had children who were babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, I pretty much made peace with the season of my life and I didn't fret much over the exterior of our house.  A couple of summers ago I instituted the rule that I would weed and mulch every year. Around that time I also drew a to-scale grid plan of my flower beds and realized how many "holes" there were between plants, so I've worked pretty hard over the past few years at filling those holes with plants, thus choking out the weeds! As a result, my flower gardening is the best it has ever been.

Once or twice a week it's nice to go pull weeds and tidy up, and in doing so I save myself the trouble of dealing with overwhelming amounts of weeds. (Trust me, I have been there in the past. Many times.)

Don't talk to me about the vegetable garden. I'd happily turn it back into lawn, but my husband likes to have a vegetable garden. It's just that we can't keep it up, especially not with cancer nipping at our heels. We'll just draw the veil of charity over it!

It is a good idea to establish a basic routine for tidying other outdoor spaces like porches, decks, and patios.  We have some messiness near our patio right now as we're doing some landscaping and have a few "piles" nearby, but I do try to at least keep the piles somewhat tidy.  It's a classic case of doing the best I can do, knowing it's imperfect, and accepting that anyhow.  Choosing one day a week to sweep the patio, tidy up the porch, knock down spider webs, etc. does help things stay reasonably nice during the busy summer months. Remember--it's about bringing basic order, not imposing perfection.

Tidying the Schedule  

This is my favorite. Tidying the house and yard help give us physical peace so we can relax and enjoy other pursuits, but in my opinion nothing brings more peace than tidying the schedule. This includes taking a look at the week or month ahead and deciding what to embrace, what to decline, how to order our days, what types of meals might be nice, what things need our focus, and what other things can be ignored.

Sometimes my schedule is inevitably packed.  During those times, tidying the schedule means looking at it with an eye to efficiency and figuring out what to do to make life easier.  Grouping errands and appointments helps tremendously, as does having simple meals or freezer meals. But I don't want to live with a packed schedule for too long if I can help it!

Often taking the bird's eye view of the schedule will allow me to see what I can cull.  It helps me hone in on what's most important to us in our lives right now. It helps me save time by narrowing my focus. Back when my children were younger and I felt perpetually overwhelmed, I decided to make a short (3-5 items) list every quarter of the things I wanted to focus upon for those months.  It was *so* helpful for me to keep that visibly posted in my kitchen as a reminder not to take on too much, and to do one thing at a time, and keep my focus on what I deemed important during that season of my life.

I think that tidying the schedule is an essential aspect of living an intentional life. It's easy to be swept along on the waves of our days, yet we need to determine where we want to go and navigate in that direction.  Tidying the schedule is the tool that gets us there. 

When To Tidy

I suggest tidying main living areas up each day. You don't have to get it to perfection--just try to eliminate the messes.  (And recruit the children!) I try to Do Something, no matter how small (kind of like exercise!) and just stick to the commitment.  You could pick Saturday as the day to pull weeds and tidy outdoor spaces--and don't worry about it if it's pouring rain.  I love to tidy my schedule on Sundays after church. The new week is ahead, my husband takes a nap, I make a cup of tea, and I look ahead at the week to think through meals, obligations, appointments, exercise plans, school plans, et cetera.  It takes less than an hour and I simply enjoy sitting with the planner and my thoughts!  I feel more prepared when I begin my week that way. When my children were smaller and needier, I often spent an hour or two on the weekends at a local coffee shop doing my schedule-tidying and menu planning, and then I went grocery shopping. We will all do this differently! 

For me, tidying regularly brings more peace and serenity into our home (and into my heart and head), so I do consider it an essential habit in my life.

Next week I plan to write about another habit that involves discipline...but something a little more fun than chores and tidying! 

Children and Chores

This post is a follow-up to the post I wrote on Monday about the habit of daily chores.  When I wrote that post, I included a section on chores and children, but then realized I had too much to write, and needed to allow "children and chores" to be its own post!

Unfortunately the word "chores" often has negative connotations.  I once heard a parenting guru say that in her household, she never had her children to chores because she considered it too coercive.  Her line of thinking appeared to run along the lines of: I want my house clean, but I don't need to burden my children with that, and I can't do it all, so if I can't manage it, I'll reconcile myself with living with chores undone. She wanted to give her children choices, including the choice to say no to doing chores.

I considered this for a couple of weeks, letting my children off the hook while I thought through her perspective.  I finally rejected it soundly and comfortably as a principle that simply isn't right for our family.

First of all, I think chores are beneficial because they are a vehicle for teaching self-discipline.  And self-discipline, or self-governance, is a quality that I consider essential.  

There are a couple of things I repeat to my children often.  One is that there is no substitute for hard work.  No matter how gifted or talented you are, no matter how lucky you seem to be, no matter how wealthy or privileged you are, at the end of the day I believe there is no substitute for simply getting down to business and working hard. 

The other thing I repeat often is "the best thing you can learn to tell yourself is NO." My children giggle when I demonstrate this point by pretending to talk to myself ("But I want to eat five doughnuts for dinner tonight!" "NO!" or "But I want to take all month off from washing the dishes!" "NO"!).  My children see the humor in the things I want to do, but they also see how doing those things--not saying "no" to myself--could cause serious repercussions. 

Second, chores teach children skills and give them training in running a household. Don't scoff!  As someone who was NOT trained in this way at all, I can attest to the enormous struggle it takes to learn how to manage a home from scratch. I barely knew how to do anything when I got married.  I once famously went to blend vichyssoise soup and didn't realize you have to put a lid on the blender.  True story.  The learning curve was steep for me, and I want my children to learn these skills at a much earlier age. 

Third, they help the child feel helpful!  Children love to be helpful.  If we are rude or unkind or weigh them down with far too many chores, they'll lose the desire to help. (I also think it's essential to say "thank you!" when they do their chores well.)  But it just feels good to know you're helping out.  People like to feel like they have something to contribute.  Self-efficacy is important in the development of a healthy human. 

Finally, they teach teamwork.  I don't hand my children a list of chores and then dash of to eat truffles in front of the television.  They see me working hard, and they know their hard work contributes to the well-being of our entire family.  We work as a team to accomplish our goals and meet needs around the house.  

Now if you have a rosy picture of children who thank me every day for giving them chores and do their long list of chores with a happy heart, please don't be deceived.  We are a real family!  But I do see that my children are growing into helpful people who often work on their own accord.  My son helped me unload plants out of the car tonight without my asking him, and my daughter cleaned her bathroom yesterday just because she felt like it.  Do they sometimes groan and resist their chores?  Sure.  But I just respond kindly and firmly, and they know the expectations we have.

We also change things depending on our family's needs and the season.  My children don't do the exact same chores all year round.

Motherhood can feel overwhelming at times because the tasks truly never end.  There is always laundry to wash, there are meals to make, there are messes to clean up.  I'm a proponent of getting children on board with these chores because children are genuinely helpful--just don't expect too much too soon. It takes time to learn to do chores, and some children are absent-minded while others are on top of things (I have one of each in my household), but both types of children can learn to do chores and help out around the house. And believe me when I say that if your children know how to tidy the living room, clean the bathroom, and take out the trash, your life will feel more manageable! 

My Daily Dozen: The Habit of Doing Chores

Earlier this year I began a blog series on my "daily dozen"--twelve habits that I use as the scaffolding of my life right now.   The first four (rest, eating well, exercise, fresh air) are habits of fostering good physical health.  The second group of four habits (Bible reading and prayer, spending time with my children, fostering my marriage, and prioritizing ideas) are related to relationships.

 
The last four "daily dozen" habits that I use as the scaffolding of my life during this season have to do with discipline. 

I find that many people shrink at the word "discipline." I suppose it conjures up ideas of punishment.  But I mean it more in the sense of self-discipline; that is, training the self.  And self-discipline is essential to living a fairly ordered life.

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The first discipline that must truly be a daily habit--and I think this applies universally to everyone--is the habit of doing chores.   By this I simply mean the routine tasks of daily life at home: laundry, cooking, cleaning the kitchen, making the beds, caring for pets, cleaning something (not everything, and not all at once!), perhaps wiping down the bathrooms.  In other words: the daily tasks that keep life running smoothly.  

It takes self-discipline to do these chores every day.  The bad news is that self-discipline can be tough, but the good news is that disciplining yourself to do the basic quotidian chores can exercise the muscle of self-discipline, which carries over into other aspects of life!

(This is a bouquet my aunt and uncle sent us in the hospital. I loved these tiny roses!)

Choosing the Chores

What are the chores *you* must do each day?  We don't all need to do the same things every day, but we *do* all need to do some things every day, and the trick is figuring out what chores you must complete daily, given the unique circumstances of your life.

For me, the basic daily chores are making the bed, doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, wiping down the bathrooms, taking care of pets, and of course cooking! I do other chores on other days, but these are the daily essentials and those are the ones I'm focused on here.

Do I do my chores perfectly every day?  No.  I do not do every chore on every single day. But I hit most (or all) of them on most days, and a few I simply never do escape unless I'm staying in a hotel (those are cleaning the kitchen, making the bed, and feeding the animals!).  I am human and sometimes I skip a chore, but the daily chores I mention here are those that, if undone, tend to get worse and worse.  Laundry and dishes pile up, food goes unused, surfaces get grimy, bedding becomes dirty, et cetera. These chores must be done every day, or almost every day.

Managing the Chores

I find that the easiest way to manage these routine chores is to compartmentalize them. Creating morning and evening routines is so helpful!  My morning routine includes sorting and starting laundry, feeding pets, making our bed, wiping down our bathroom, cleaning the litter box. The evening routine includes making sure the kitchen is spic-and-span, getting the laundry folded and put away, making sure the chickens are tucked into bed, and looking at tomorrow to be sure we're all set on the menu plan. Just create a simple, straightforward routine that you can memorize and then do almost effortlessly.

 Last night my best friend and I were talking about how overwhelming life can be, and I mentioned the fact that Steve Jobs always wore the same clothes, thus eliminating that decision from his life and streamlining his decision-making.  Now I would *never* take the Steve Jobs approach to wardrobing because I love picking out my clothes for the day, and I enjoy variation in my clothing choices, but the principle behind that is useful when applied to certain routine tasks.  If you don't have to decide each evening to clean the kitchen--you just do it out of habit--life is easier and more efficient.  Setting up your repetitive daily chores in a way that reduces your need to decide what to do and when is a genuinely helpful approach to managing the home.

Now I will admit that when we are not doing schoolwork or we're in an extended period of unusual scheduling, like we are right now, I am more flexible about when I accomplish these tasks. But they still need to be done, and if I get too flexible, they start to fall by the wayside! I have learned the hard way that life runs more smoothly in my home when I stick faithfully to the morning and evening routines.

And our children help out, too.  In fact, I have an entire extra post planned for later this week on children and chores.  I began writing it and realized it needed a post all its own, so I'll publish that soon.

(A really fun bouquet our pastor's wife left on our front porch. Those sunflowers make me so happy!)

One additional thing to remember is that sometimes we dread a chore so much that we put more mental energy into not doing it than we would put time into doing it.  I know someone who dreads washing the dishes so much that this person simply didn't do it for a long time--and then had to throw away dishes and get new ones!  In reality the time it takes to wash dishes, even without a dishwasher, is quite minimal.  I would bet that this person spent more mental time feeling irritated about those dishes than they would have spent just washing them each day.  So: chin up! It's so much easier to just do the chore and not have it hanging over you.

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 I am always interested in how other people manage and tackle the routine tasks of life.  Do you have any tips on accomplishing daily chores? Please share them if you do!

If you are interested, you may find all posts on habits here.

Now time for me to make the bed!

My Daily Dozen: The Habit Hiatus is Over

Earlier this year I began a blog series on my "daily dozen"--twelve habits that I use as the scaffolding of my life during this season.   The first four (rest, eating well, exercise, fresh air) are habits of fostering good physical health.  The second group of four habits (Bible reading and prayer, spending time with my children, fostering my marriage, and prioritizing ideas) are related to relationships. 

I took some time off from this series--and this blog!--while we processed my husband's cancer diagnosis, but I'm ready to start back up and write about the final four habits.  I plan to publish the habits posts over the next four Mondays.  And the more I write about habits, the more I feel like I have to say! There's so much I have to leave out of the blog posts in the interest of saving space.

If you are interested, here's the link with all of the "habits" posts.

In the meantime, is your lavender in bloom?  Bobby at the local nursery told me to prune, prune, prune mine in order to keep it from getting woody.  So a few days ago I pruned and harvested!  And while I worked I thought of England in July of 2005, and how it smelled to drive a country road with the windows down....

Beautiful!

Relax and Smile

During this time between surgery and radiation I am busy getting my house in order.  Lately it has rained here, so I haven't had the opportunity to finish mulching my flower beds.  I'm working inside the house on rainy days!

Two days ago I hung a painting and a framed note in my bathroom. 

I would like to frame the painting someday, but for now it will hang unframed.  It's a beautiful original oil painting that I found in a local thrift shop a couple of years ago.  I think I paid $3 for it.  

This little handwritten paper is something I found in my grandmother's piano bench when we inherited her piano last year.  I love it!  I think it must have been a prayer that she read aloud in a gathering or meeting sometime; I particularly love her note to self at the top to "relax and smile" (because isn't that an important thing to remember in motherhood?).  I set it aside after I found it and knew I'd frame it one day, and that day came this week.

I like to read it while I brush my teeth--a little twice-a-day inspiration!

Big Surgery and Tiny Goals

It has been over a month since I posted, and many things have happened in the interim.

The biggest thing is that our trip to the comprehensive cancer center in June gave us a big surprise: they recommended an extensive surgical removal of the cancer followed by radiation and chemo.  They were talking about an 8-10 hour surgery and 7-10 days in the hospital. We were blindsided by this and opted to go to another comprehensive cancer center to get a second opinion.  (The good thing about that was that we got to enjoy a trip to Charleston and stay with my father!  MUSC's head-neck center is excellent and we knew we'd get good advice there.)

The third opinion was 100% on board with the second, and cancer doctors are wonderful about not wasting time, and on July 3 my husband underwent an 11-hour surgery.  The surgery showed that the cancer was more extensive than we'd anticipated (although I think his surgeon suspected this).  Our surgeon removed 30% of his oral tongue and 50% of the base of tongue and reconstructed the tongue using a 12"x4" swath of tissue from my husband's left arm.  He also had to remove part of the hyoid bone.  He did a radical neck dissection to remove all the lymph nodes in my husband's neck, and as part of this he had to remove part of the jugular vein because the cancer was there, too. Amazing, but he got all the gross cancer in my husband's body, and radiation and chemotherapy should mop up any rogue microscopic cells.  We were in the hospital for a week in another state, away from our children, and came home last Tuesday.  It's wonderful to be home!

When we first heard the recommendation for surgery we were genuinely terrified and resistant.  It seemed so vast and scary. But we did an enormous amount of research, praying, talking to people, and God swiftly and obviously answered our prayers for clarity. 

A few days after surgery my husband--who had a tracheostomy and a feeding tube, not to mention several wound sites--was walking several miles each day around the hospital floor.

Two weeks after surgery and he's off the trach and tube (those were pulled before we left the hospital) and walking 5 miles many mornings.  He's still quite tired and needs naps, but his recovery has been amazing so far.

Now he's healing and we'll start radiation and chemotherapy at the cancer center in a few weeks. We will spend about 6-7 weeks living away from home (although we hope to return home on weekends).  That will be an adventure!

Throughout all of this we have witnessed and received so much grace, love, kindness, encouragement, vision, and mercy from God and from so many people.  It has been the most humbling experience of my life.

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Back here at home I'm working on some of my goals.  My primary goals for the week and a half between hospital release and post-operative visit (other than the obvious things like caring for my family, feeding them, laundering, cleaning house, etc!) were to administer my children's state-required standardized tests, to order everything we'll need for our upcoming school year, and to weed and mulch my flower beds.  These were time-consuming tasks!  This is the first year that I had two children to test, and I am happy to report that Annie is done and Finn only has one more test section to go!  I also spent an afternoon and evening earlier this week (it was raining--couldn't mulch) on school planning. I have all of Finn's items for the school year ordered and most of Annie's. 

We got a truckload of mulch on Saturday and I'm working diligently in the flower beds most days--pulling weeds, pruning anything that needs it, and spreading mulch. It's hot but rewarding work.  The home health nurse who checks on my husband came in today and told us it's her birthday.  I expressed empathy that she has to work on her birthday.  "Yes," she said, "but seeing your beautiful flowers out there was wonderful and made me happy!"  I admit that I love my flower gardening and am glad that it makes other people happy as well.  Right now the hostas are in blooms, as are the shasta daisies, black-eyed susans, and the few morning glories I'm allowing to creep over the porch.  Everything is lush and green. 

Having little tiny goals set for tiny windows of time works well for me right now, as it's hard to do any planning beyond about a week or two these days.  The next batch of goals will include children's doctor visits (already scheduled for next week), having our house pressure-washed and the new deck and old porch stained (and painting the porch ceiling and trim for the first time *ever!*), a haircut, radiation/chemo consults, tidying the patio, celebrating my husband's birthday, making lodging arrangements for our time out of state, and organizing our school room.

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Doing these homey tasks is so satisfying in the face of something like cancer.  Cancer feels large and threatening and scary....because it is large and threatening and scary. But there's no point in shrinking in fear.  Life continues and I think it's healthy and so important to continue to cook good food, care for the house, read to our children, and take walks outside. Many people have asked how our children are doing. They are doing remarkably well, even though the separation during surgery was tough. They are happy children and are not worried or anxious.  I think this may be the trickle-down effect: we aren't overly worried or anxious, and the atmosphere in our home is peaceful. 

Our next obstacle will be radiation and chemotherapy, but homeschooling allows us to all be together as a family through that (so grateful!!!!) and we are going to make the best of it by enjoying slow days and each other, and playing "tourist" in the other state as long as my husband feels up to it!

I hope to resume my little series on habits  soon.  Our pastor has also asked me to start writing a devotional series to be debuted during Advent (based on what he has read on my husband's health website/blog, that I've been keeping up to date) and I may start thinking about working on that soon. In the meantime, cancer is part of our lives, but so are love and faith and joy and kindness and peace! And God is always good.