When I was a teenager, I used to have a poster on my bedroom wall of a beautiful lion lying with one front paw over the other, captioned "Every time I put my best foot forward, someone steps on it." It can feel a lot like that when one decides to "get organised" or start following a schedule. Almost guaranteed, just when you think you've worked out the perfect schedule, someone throws up on it. Or "life happens" - a sudden illness or injury by anyone in your family will throw your schedule off, the car breaks down, the cat gets stuck up a tree, the toilet backs up...any one of a myriad possibilities. And it can make you groan and ask yourself "WHY do I even bother??"

So what is the point of a schedule? And is it really a useful, workable tool in a busy life full of unpredictable people and events?

The point of a schedule is not to program your life down to every minute. Its purpose is to give a guiding structure to your days - a chosen focus for a given time period. It's designed to be a tool that helps you get more done, not a task-master that slaps you around and makes you feel inadequate! Here's how I come up with a schedule:
1. I start by thinking about all the major focuses of my life right now - what am I trying to get done? What balls am I juggling? Life is full of seasons - there is constant change as kids get older, needs and desires and interests change, health gets better or worse, certain projects are being worked on etc. You can't create one schedule and expect it to carry you through the rest of your life. You probably need a new one at least every 6 months, or if certain projects are for a shorter period of time, then even more often.
2. Once I've made a list of my current obligations and ambitions, I ask myself if ALL of them are important enough to deserve my focus right now? Could some be dropped, or delayed? And then I ask myself, for the ones remaining, approx how big a block of time do I realistically need to focus on them each day?
3. I start outlining a schedule - what things serve as essential framework? I need to get enough sleep - when am I going to go to bed and get up? Are there fixed daily commitments I need to allow for (eg getting someone off to work or school, or a part time job or course)? What other things are important to me to make time for? Daily prayer and Bible study? Personal exercise? Housework? Plot these in.
4. Now look at all those main focuses you listed  - where do those blocks of time best fit in? Can you fit them all in every day, or do some need to alternate? Do you need to adjust how much time you allowed for them? We all have only 24 hours in a day, a good portion of which needs to be set aside for rest, eating, self care and family responsibilities. It makes no sense to then expect we can fit in 14 hours worth of work or commitments in the remaining, say, 8 hours of available time! And this is one of the main benefits of creating a schedule - it helps you be more realistic!
5. I keep fiddling and adjusting, dropping or curtailing things until I have a schedule that seems workable and realistic, with enough breathing space in it not to turn me into a crazy, frustrated madwoman!
6. Most important, I acknowledge to myself that days are seldom going to go according to plan, and that this schedule can and MUST be flexible! So why bother with one in the first place? Because.....

• With a schedule in place, generally more will get done than if one just "flies by the seat of one's pants," even on those days when disaster strikes.
• A schedule gives you a focus - you know what you're needing to work on in a given time. Yes, you definitely lay aside your agenda when a child or husband needs you, but the rest of the time, you know what you are supposed to be focused on, and can train yourself not to get sidetracked by other things  - email for example.
• When interruptions have come and gone, you can get back on track more easily. If a big chunk has been taken out of my day, I then chose whether to ignore the things left out and just pick up at the current time on my schedule, or to go back to important things, and adjust the rest of the plan for the day.
• The process of creating a schedule has the very desirable effect of making us take a realistic look at our lives and what we are expecting to fit into them, and discover whether it's possible, or we're setting ourselves up for a sense of failure. Once, many years ago when my children were small, I made a list of everything I felt I needed to get done every day, with approximate, realistic times of how long it took. I discovered that my days included some 32 hours of responsibilities, for every 24 hours period. This did two things for me - it stopped me feeling so guilty that I wasn't "getting it all done," and it caused me to adjust my expectations of myself!

So, let me give you a real life example:
This past weekend I realized I needed a new schedule to help me better manage my current aims and responsibilities. I have several things I'm focused on right now:

• Keeping up on housework
• Making sure I set aside time to spend in Bible study and prayer
• My 1000 Things decluttering goal - until the end of May - including giving things away, and advertising items for sale as well as posting sold books etc.
  
• Blogging about the decluttering, and also maintaining my gardening blog
• A Permaculture Design Course I'm enrolled in - it's online and from home, but needs a couple of hours a day study, until the end of July.
• Homeschooling my remaining two students - they learn mostly independently now, but I need to be present and available to help with problems, administer tests etc
• Keeping on top of all the administrative tasks of running a household and my husband's business.
• Doing the gardening and homesteading that provides much of our food etc
  

It took a bit of juggling to figure out how to fit all these things in, along with the other usual responsibilities of having a family. I had to acknowledge that the amount of time I wanted to allow for some of these things would simply not fit into the schedule, and so I had to chose to reduce the allocated time - knowing that it's better to do SOMETHING often than to wait for "enough" time and end up doing little or nothing at all towards a particular goal!

I finally came up with a workable schedule for the next few months. It's not perfect, and will certainly need tweaking as I go along. Of course, it will only work for those days when I'm mostly at home. But it does help me get more done.

I started using this schedule on Monday, and was doing well, until 9:50am when one of my daughters fell off a chair in the room she is renovating for her sister and impaled her foot on a crowbar. (There's something about Mondays and schedules....). The next several hours were spent in first aid, doctors etc....BUT despite this, my schedule had already helped me get much more done that I otherwise would have by that time of the morning, the majority of the important items on my running to-do list for the day were already crossed off, and when the situation was over, I knew exactly what I needed to do to get the rest taken care of, and where to pick up with my schedule!

Yes, I think a schedule is definitely a useful, workable tool, even in a busy, crazy life full of the unpredictable - so long as you use it to help you think and plan, then hold it loosely day to day.

Due to a lot of unexpected interruptions last week, I wasn't able to keep up with daily blogging about my 1000 Things, though I was able to declutter most days. So here I'm combining the items assigned to give away or sell over three days of last week.

50 items were added to the give away boxes, including: 3 books, 2 sets of kids writing paper, 1 DVD, 12 CD cases, 2 blank DVD-R discs, 1 set origami papers, 1 set of invitations/envelopes, 2 audio CDs, 2 calendars, 1 knick knack, 7 post-it pads, 1 bookmark, 1 notepad, a bag of gift tags, 1 CD holder, 1 notebook, 1 compendium, 1 homeschooling manual, 1 tray and 8 highlighters.

12 DVDs, 6 Videos and 45 Books joined the for sale items, for a total of 63.

A few weeks ago, I was reviewing my routines and schedules, and asking God what my priorities should be in this season of my life; how he wanted me to order my life. He gently showed me that I needed to know first what my purpose was. Once that was clear, the things that needed to be priorities would be obvious. Purpose informs priorities. (Inform - to pervade or permeate with manifest effect:  A love of nature informed his writing).

And so I began to consider, "WHAT are the chief purposes of my life?"
1) The primary purpose of every person is to bring glory to God. This is why we were created - to live in relationship to God and to bring him glory by lifting up his name in the world, and magnifying him in the eyes of others. Every single thing we do (and how we do it) should glorify God. "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." 1 Cor 10:31
2) If you are a married woman, your purpose is also to bring glory to your husband. "A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man." I Cor 11:7-9

This second point - that my purpose is to bring glory to my husband - was something I had never thought about before in quite those terms. This concept was what the Lord deliberately brought to me attention, to show me what my purpose and priorities should be.

In Ephesians 5:22-32, Paul directs wives to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord, and husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church. He goes on, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church." God has chosen the marriage relationship as a model of the relationship between Jesus and the church, as it is meant to be. When the world looks at Christian marriages, they should see something profound and attractive - a tangible example that draws them and causes them to want to know more about God.

God created man and women in his own image - both are created in God's image, and as such the essential natures of both are the same. However, there are differences in our physical bodies, and differences in our intended roles. Neither is intended to be greater or lesser, but complimentary to and completing one another.

At Creation, man was created first, and the woman was created for the man, as a "helper" that would suitable for him.

Consider the Trinity as a role-model. Within the Trinity there are three distinct roles:
God the Father - the planner who makes the plans
God the Son - the one who carries out the plans
God the Spirit - the one who also carries out the plans, as well as keeps and empowers Christians.

Jesus was clear about his role - he came to "work the works of Him who sent me" (John 9:4), he "glorified Thee (the Father) on earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given me to do." (John 17:4). In obeying God and carrying out his plans, he brought God, his father, glory.

Also, Jesus taught that the Spirit would glorify Jesus (John 16:14) and that he (Jesus) glorified God (John 17:4). Neither worked to bring glory to themselves.

Just as Christ glorified the Father by doing the Father's "work," I am to glorify my husband by doing my husband's "work." My role is to glorify my husband. I was created for him. Just as you were created for your husband.

Now, we know that the fall of man brought sin into the world, and the consequences of that resulted in much grief, turmoil, bitterness and misery. Indeed, one of the impacts was the loss of harmony between Adam and Eve in fulfilling their roles, and the beginning of power struggles between men and women. However, Christ came to redeem us from the curse and if we are "in Christ," we have the potential to regain much of what was lost at the fall of man.

The husband was and is still to be the head of his wife. (Ephesians 5:23)
Your husband is the one in charge. That does not mean he has to do everything; it means that he is responsible for managing his home and family. A part of managing is delegating to others, including you.

A wife is to model ("act out") the church being submissive to and glorifying Christ. (Eph 5:22, 24, 32)

The husband is to model ("act out") Christ's response to the church. Christ died for the church, a sacrifice of self (Eph 5:25). Christ loves, nourishes and cherishes the church. (Eph 5:28, 29, 33)

These two relationships are designed to come together - on the one hand the husband cherishes, sacrifices for, nourishes and loves his wife. On the other hand, the wife is to submit to and glorify her husband. This is a model of the relationship between Christ and his church.

When we fulfil our God-given roles, we bring glory to God. Conversely, when we act in ways that are contrary to how God wants us to live, we cause others to make some pretty awful assumptions about what it is to be a Christian, and whether or not it's worth being one. Titus 2:4-5 says "...train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God."

It is only in fulfilling and living out these roles as God intended that you and your husband will have close unity and harmony in your marriage. In Christ, the closeness that was lost at the fall of man can be regained.

"Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outwards adornment..... Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are here daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear." 1 Peter 3:1-6

(The following list is adapted from "The Excellent Wife" by Martha Peace)
1. Ask your husband what his goals are, and how you can help him to accomplish them. Ask him "Is there anything I can do differently to make it easier for you?"
2. Be organised with cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry and cooking. As you fulfil your God-given responsibilities, you husband is freed to do his work. (Goodbye Chaos, Hello Peace may help you with this).
3. Save some energy for him every day - put him first over the other people, work, hobbies and commitments in your life.
4. Talk about him in a positive light to others. Do not slander him at all, even if what you are saying is true.
5. Do whatever you can to make him look good, and to help him accomplish his goals. For example, offer to run errands for him, organise your day to be available to help him with his projects, pray for him and make good suggestions. Give him the freedom not to use your suggestions, and do not be offended if he chooses not to. Willingly and cheerfully rearrange your schedule for him whenever necessary.
6. Consider his work (job, goals, hobbies, work for the Lord) as more important than your own.
7. Consider the things that you are involved in. How do they glorify your husband? Do any of them interfere with your ability to be available as his helper? Ask his guidance.
8. Think of specific ways that you can help him accomplish his goals. For example, getting up early to see him off to work with a good breakfast, taking care in recording phone messages for him, keeping careful records of money spent to help with the budgeting, anticipate things he may need in order to achieve a certain goal.
9. Do and say things that guild him up instead of tear him down.
10. Dress and present yourself in an attractive manner that is pleasing to your husband.

As I realise that my chief purposes are to glorify God, and to bring glory to my husband, those purposes have a profound effect on how I prioritise the things in my life. How about you?