This is day 25 of 31 Days of Intentional Community. Thanks for reading along! This is my friend Megan, with me and baby Hallee:
She was in town for a blog conference so Hallee and I drove downtown to meet her for dinner and get to have a little face-to-face time with an otherwise virtual friend. And it was awesome! Megan's been an encouragement to me through her writing over the years of blogging and I loved getting to hear her sweet voice.
I'm not sure if I would have taken baby #1, Gigi, out for a night on the town back when I was a first-time mom. I was pretty by-the-books with my scheduling back then and that might have really screwed with her schedule after all.
But while I do love a schedule, I value community interaction even more. And it's not just for spontaneity's sake that I want to leave space in my plan.
Megan wrote about this a bit in terms of scheduling and routines with babies and in the family. As a mom who was a staunch scheduler with baby #1 and has gradually relaxed things into more of a rhythm with each subsequent baby, I take her words to heart as a reminder of how things in my life might tend if I don't watch out with intentional eyes and heart-- this certainly applies to more than just parenting, but also our work schedules, hobbies and even ministry.
"Protecting the security of our established routines is usually a wise and healthy plan. But if we grasp the convenience of predictability so tightly that we close ourselves off to unexpected encounters with people who need to know the love of Christ, or to opportunities to serve others in our communities or church families, we must examine whether we are allowing schedule to become king rather than leaning on the Holy Spirit to guide each day." ~Spirit-Led Parenting
There are definitely seasons where we cling to our schedules to keep our heads above water, but when things are as "normal" as they'll ever be, that's when I find the need to assess where I'm at with my priorities. Do you tend to over- or under-schedule?
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