Self Evaluation

As you know, the Zoo has been going through extremely tough times the past few years. If I list them out it is amazing what the family has had to endure and live through:

• Liz losing her eyesight
• my dad’s illness
• Liz’s shunt failing twice in the first year requiring two additional surgeries
• my MIL’s diagnose of breast cancer
• my dad’s death
• Richard’s retirement from the fire department for medical reasons
• mom’s COPD flaring up
• multiple hospitalizations of Liz and my mom throughout the last two years
• the death of my mom on Christmas Day
• the death of my MIL a month after my mom’s

Now that the rush has calmed down, my anxiety and stress levels have gone through the roof.  I am feeling out of control in all areas.  I have done some reflection over the past few days and I think I have come to the conclusion about what has happened in my life and why I am feeling like this.  I have fallen away from the routines I used to follow.

I had a working schedule of schooling, chores, meals and errands which the family followed. The house ran relatively smoothly.  Schooling was completed, the house was presentable at all times, and the house felt more peaceful overall. Over time as I was needed elsewhere outside of the house more and more, these things slowly fell by the wayside. First the meal planning gave way to seat of the pants fixing of meals.  Schooling was fit in when I was at home. Chores were done when someone noticed mold growing in the tub.  And even as things have settled down, these bad habits have remained in place. It has ended up affecting everyone and everything in the house.

The schooling barely gets accomplished, and it is always involves a struggle with at least one child and often more of them.  The cleanliness of the house is the lowest acceptable level.  Meals are hit or miss because nothing is planned.  Errands are done almost on a daily basis because the monthly big shopping trips have not been done, so we run out of things unexpectedly and we need them NOW!

One of the major areas of my life which has been short changed is my prayer life. As life became more complicated, I lost the routine of prayer.  Last week I took the time to reboot my prayer life. Some days I only said a rosary in the car after dropping the older ones off at the college, but it was something. It felt good to be back in conversation with God and I felt a sense of peace slowly returning to my soul.  Prayer should be a large part of my life as a Catholic.  To get back on tract of daily prayer, I have decided to rely on the old standards for two months or so.  We will be praying:

• The Morning Offering
• A Daily Rosary
• Reading the Day’s Gospel and discussing it with the children
• Daily Proverbs Reading

This evening, I sat down planned out the menu for the week.  It feels so freeing to have the meals back under control. Home school has just been happening without thought or purpose for this year. Over the next week I am going to evaluate the home school schedule and get that moving forward again. For the short term, I decided to enroll the older four home schooled children in Time 4 Learning , to get an idea of where or if there are gaps in learning.  As I evaluate the home school schedule, I feel this program will help me plan to fill in their gaps.

I am also going to evaluate the chores which need to be done throughout the day and week then assign chores to the children.  I realized I need to become more proactive with the follow through when I assign chores. I will making sure they complete the chore assignments to my standards and if not, then I will make them complete them to the standard.

I have my assignments for the week.  What do you have planned?

Pax Christi!

 

A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework
~~St. Francis of Rome