Repetition

I came across this great paragraph in Anne Lamott's book, Stitches.  "Here's the true secret of life: We mostly do everything over and over.  In the morning, we let the dogs out, make coffee, read the paper, help whoever is around get ready for the day.  We do our work.  In the afternoon, if we have left, we come home, put down our keys and satchels, let the dogs out, take off constrictive clothing, make a drink or put water on for tea, toast the leftover bit of scone.  I love ritual and repetition.  Without the, I would be a balloon with a slow leak."

I find that routine is incredibly important to me, especially at the start of the day.  My skeleton daily routine goes something like this: get up, pour a cup of coffee, sit down and read my Bible, pray, grab a glass of water, and get ready.  Once I leave my bedroom after my children have started waking up the routine gets much less consistent.  Lately it has been: grab the car keys and drive to school, come home, make lunches, help children find misplaced belongings, get school kids out the door, clean up disaster in kitchen.  By now I should have some sort of routine for the kids that do school at home, but frankly it is often: look for boys, start load of laundry, pick up random garbage, find boys again, look for lesson plan and books, find boys again, sit down and read history and Bible.  The girls start to appear at this point creating a new disaster in the kitchen, which I try to ignore and focus on reading.  Then we all gather at the table and on a good day work on math and writing.  Sometimes this takes two hours, sometimes six depending on who texts needing me to give them a ride, if I need to go to the grocery store, if a friend has an emergency, if one of the kids asks a really good question leading to a bunny trail.  At 3:00 I get into the car and drive to school to pick up the kids.  This usually takes 45 minutes since they don't understand that they are supposed to come find me, not vice versa.  We get home have our after school snack and catch mom up on the day chat.  I start dinner which is usually eaten around 6:00.  The evenings are sort of a free for all of athletic events, 4-H meetings, parish meetings, friends stopping by, rides being needed, random shopping trips, nothing is ever routine about evenings.  I shoot for locking myself in my room around 9 to start reading and letting my mind unwind from the day.  Now that I write it down it looks pretty wild.  And really that is just the skeleton.  It can flesh out in all kinds of craziness depending on the day.  If I miss the cup of coffee and Bible reading, you may as well just send me back to bed, it isn't going to get pretty from there.

I appreciated being told it is okay to depend on some routine in a crazy world.  My routine may not be super consistent, but it really does bring some sanity to my life.  If I have a few footholds to step into during the day it makes life feel much more manageable.  I can take the unexpected if I have prepared with God's word and a little caffeine.  I feel like I accomplished something in the day if I get one load of laundry finished.  I have more hope for the next day if I can read a few pages before ten and let my brain untangle itself.  It is little things that God gives us to help us live in a material world.  I still need to lock myself in the bathroom occasionally and cry out to God for help.  Routine must not become my God.  It's just a little bit of normal in a windy world.