Today I finally managed to recommit myself to prayer. For me this means becoming regular with my daily obligatory prayer, making time for prayers with baby, and including at least some focused personal prayer and reading of sacred writings daily.
Why today? Well … I need it. I have been feeling stress, guilt and discontent far too often for someone who’s trying to live a year focused on peace. Rather than peace, my mental choices lately (comparing myself to others, judging my insides by others’ outsides, coveting, dwelling on the negative, seeing things in black and white, judging) have been pushing me further away from others and creating a negative aura. For more on how I currently and hope to think, check out those links.
Enough is enough! I started this blog almost 6 months ago focusing on the basics: prayer and meditation. I need to remember these as the foundation and start living them in my life again. I expect it to be challenging. Acquiring any new habit requires discipline and brings up all the inner demons that are far more comfortable with old dysfunctional ways of being. Knowing this, and also knowing that I WANT TO BE HAPPY, I commit to pushing forward with these uncomfortable essential ways of being until they are infused into my life and transform me.
In that spirit, I can tell you that lots of good things happened today. Baby woke up early and happy, on track for a new routine in the new year (I’d love to get to work by 8:30 at the latest, which means leaving the house by 7:45 at least, which means wake-up by around 6:30 ideally). I had a chance to stock up on groceries. Baby played wonderfully well independently today, which was both a delight to see and gave me freedom to do more things around the house. She also got to help with her new favourite chore/game: laundry! Changing the sheets; carrying sheets to the back room; shoving them into the washing machine; turning the dial; then taking clothes out of the machine and, yes, hanging them. Our 14 month old helps with chores, people!!
I also had time today to finish the PILE of mending that had been accumulating (yay!) and clean out the sewing kit, getting rid of a couple items. Also purged a couple baby sweaters, some extra hangers, two pairs of socks (garbage: threadbare). Made a yummy dinner: quinoa with veg bouillon (cube 🙂 – easy yummy flavour!), split pea curry, then applesauce for dessert. Hubby helped. And, called 5 friends today: a recent record!
All in all, a good day.