Five on Friday
Hi friends! Happy Friday! If you’re here in Florida, you know it’s been a wild week with schools closing for 3 days. We are so thankful we didn’t even experience a power outage here, but between being out sick for a couple days last week, three days of hurricane cancellations this week, and Monday being a holiday I am beginning to wonder when we are ever actually going to go to school for a full 5 days. Maybe in two weeks? We are definitely holding those who experienced the devastating effects of Hurricane Idalia in our hearts, it’s unbelievable how quickly someone’s entire life can change and even though we are whining about our kids being home when they probably didn’t need to be I am incredibly grateful NE Florida is fine. Now for this week’s 5 things…
**One**
This past Monday in the New Testament class I co-teach at our church we discussed the Gospel of Luke. We thought this was an excellent place to begin since it tells the story of Jesus in such an easy to read historical narrative style. Next week we’ll continue with Luke’s writing as I teach the book of Acts and we get the story of the early church and Paul before diving into all of Paul’s letters.
We met my favorite New Testament character in this gospel. She’s actually in all 3 of the synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke, and I never tire of reading her brief story. She isn’t named, and doesn’t get more than a paragraph in any of the accounts of her interaction with Jesus, but she’s my favorite. We find her story in Luke 8, at the end of a chapter packed with some of Jesus’ most well-known miracles and parables. In verse 42 we are told that Jesus is coming into a town and he’s practically being crushed by the throng of people pressing in to get close to him. It’s as if the parade at Disneyland got out of hand and hundreds of children were vying to get close to Mickey Mouse all at once. It was crowded, noisy, chaotic and probably incredibly overwhelming for anyone with some sensory issues! (I’m cringing just thinking about the setting!) All of a sudden Jesus stops and says aloud “who touched me?” The disciples are looking at one another absolutely baffled, “what do you mean who touched you? EVERYONE is touching you! How in the world are we supposed to answer that question?!” But Jesus knows something miraculous has just happened and he’s looking around intensely for someone specific.
Finally he sees her. Looking for all the world like she wished the earth would open up and swallow her whole, standing at the edge of the crowd as if she knows she doesn’t belong there yet can’t bring herself to leave. Luke tells us that once she realizes she can’t go unnoticed (because the savior of the world kind of notices everything) she tentatively starts to come toward him and falls at his feet trembling. She tells him that she has been bleeding for 12 years, that the doctors haven’t been able to heal her, she’s used all her money pursuing help, and nothing has worked. She had heard that this Jesus could heal, and she just knew that if she could only touch the hem of his robe as he passed by that would be enough to make her well. As I imagine the scene he looks at her with such compassion in his eyes that her shame is removed. He tells her “my daughter, your faith has healed you, go in peace.”
It’s obviously an amazing miracle. Anytime someone is physically healed it’s an awe-inspiring miracle. Yet that’s not what captivates me about this story—there are lots of fantastic miracles of healing in the Gospels but none of them grab me quite like this one. It’s her absolute boldness that catches me every time I read her story. In a Jewish society, any woman would be considered unclean during her monthly cycle and was not to be interacting in general society. This wasn’t to be cruel, it was a set of laws established during a time when hygiene was difficult, clean water was a chore to come by, sanitation was much more of a complicated process than it is today with our modern technology and plumbing. When her cycle was over, there was a ritual cleansing process a woman would go through and she’d be “restored” to community. To be bleeding for twelve YEARS would have kept her “unclean” for over a decade. She wouldn’t have been allowed to live among her family or friends, she couldn’t provide for herself economically because trading, bartering, and even the sale of services and goods takes place in the context of communal interactions—all of which were forbidden for her. She couldn’t worship in the temple, she couldn’t come to draw water at a well with other women while they were there. Everything about her life was separate from the rest of society. And she was desperate in her loneliness.
Maybe this Jesus would help her? She’d heard stories as she skirted about at the edges of society; this was one who could heal. Was he the Messiah they’d been waiting for? She didn’t know. But she knew she wanted healing. In order to get herself close to him, however, she had to break pretty much every law she’d tried to abide by for the past 12 years. She had to insert herself into the center of a crowd of people and approach a man. In the midst of her uncleanness she had to care more about pursuing wholeness than she did about upholding a set of rules. It’s her boldness that catches me off guard every time. Am I that desperate to be at the feet of Jesus? It’s really easy for us to become complacent when things are fine, but it’s this desperation she exhibits AND that Jesus honors that reminds me to bring my whole self to Him, not cowering in shame afraid to name what I really need from Him but rather with the boldness of someone who knows He is the answer.
**Two**
One of the things I try and do for my reading life is to always have a non fiction book I’m working through separate from whatever fiction novel I’m reading. I usually try and read non fiction for about 20 minutes in the morning after the kids go to school, but honestly it probably only happens a couple times a week. I’ve read some great books that have given me a lot to think about this year, but one that I just finished has some ideas in it that I cannot stop thinking about and I’m finding myself trying to implement already. Tranquility by Tuesday is by Laura Vanderkam who is a time management, career development and work/life balance expert. She’s written a lot on the topic but this book is a fabulous compilation of her 9 “rules” to help us enjoy our lives a bit more while still accomplishing what needs to be done.
I’ll share more of her ideas and how I’ve been trying to implement them over the next few weeks. But for today, the thing I’ve implemented the most consistently over the past several weeks is her “Plan on Friday” rule. Her plan on Fridays rule came about after doing hundreds of time studies with people to find out how they used their time and what pockets of time were not utilized well. She found that many people think of Sunday or Monday morning as the ideal time to plan out one’s week, but what she found was that by Friday afternoon most people are tired and not being super productive with their time anyways. If they could use that time slot to make a game plan for the following week (whatever that means—a meal plan, a work agenda, a list of meetings etc) they could hit the ground running Monday morning when studies show our energy is usually pretty high and ready to accomplish some tasks. It also gave people the opportunity to go into the weekend knowing they could relax and enjoy themselves because next week has a plan in place and we don’t have to spend our sabbath hours worrying about taking care of that. I’ve tried it the last 3 weeks and what I’ve found is that it is a game changer.
Every Friday once the kids are home and settled with a snack I sit down with a couple things: my planner, this weekly planner pad that is pictured above, a meal planning calendar, and a grocery list. First I look at my personal planner, which is like our family bible—it holds absolutely every date/appointment/special school event etc. I write out whatever is on the calendar for the following week on this weekly pad which will go on the fridge for everyone to see. I’m not convinced anyone looks at it, but should anyone need to know when the football game is or when the appointment is it’s displayed. This process helps me take a few minutes and go day by day making sure we have what we need to be successful next week—does anyone need an orange shirt for dress like a pumpkin day? I have time to order one because it’s only Friday. Do we need a mouth guard for our first football practice? We have the weekend to make sure we run by the sports store and I’m not scrambling Sunday night (which is what would be happening if I waited until Sunday night to think through the following week!)
Then I make a meal plan for the week. I look at what nights I need something in the crock pot, what nights I’m home to actually cook something in the oven and so forth. I make my grocery list as I go, checking the kitchen for what needs restocking. Then the final step is I pull up the Walmart app and place a grocery order. When prime day rolled around this past July, Walmart did a special of their Walmart+ subscription for 50% off. I didn’t really think I was interested but then was seeing everyone say what an amazing deal it was because you get groceries delivered to your house. I’ve done a lot of grocery pick up orders. But our Walmart is notoriously slow. I’ve waited in my car for 30 minutes before, just sitting in their parking lot. I decided to try their delivery option and man, what a game changer. I haven’t gone grocery shopping in 6 weeks. I schedule a delivery most weeks for Sunday after church when we are always home. My food for the week shows up at my door while I am taking care of other things and it’s absolutely magical. By Sunday afternoon I have meals planned, food put away and a fresh calendar page on the fridge for the family to see and taking care of these simple tasks has virtually eliminated the last minute scrambling throughout the week that I used to find myself doing.
Like I said, she has 9 wonderful tips, and I’d highly recommend the whole book. I’ll share more of them in future posts, but for now, if you are tired of feeling frazzled Monday mornings or spending your precious Sunday afternoons figuring out a grocery list, maybe see if planning sometime on Friday helps as much as I feel it has helped me.
**Three**
Quite awhile ago (back in January) I shared on Instagram about our new Aro box to keep our phones in. The two questions I’ve gotten the most lately sent to me are “was the Aro box worth it?” and “What planner do you use?” I thought I’d share the answer to both here in this post today.
If you aren’t familiar with an Aro box it was created by two dads who wanted to address their own screen time usage when they were supposed to be engaging with family time or even pursuing other things like reading, hobbies, and so forth. They were trying to address two things. One, part of our issue with our phones is that they don’t “live” anywhere so we are more likely to just carry them around everywhere. Most of our other belongings have a “home” but phones don’t usually. They wanted to create a beautiful home for our phones (that has 4 built in charging cords) but then realized it needed to go a step further. Part of what they realized motivated them was somehow gamifying the experience of putting your phone away. There had to be some kind of challenge or incentive to keep people putting their phones away. So they worked with software developers to create the Aro app which automatically detects when your phone is in the box via bluetooth and begins counting your time that you spend away from your phone. It allows you to label or categorize what you were doing instead, and then celebrates the fact that you spent “two hours living life.” It offers you the option of setting a goal for how many hours a day you want to be disconnected and will send you reminders to plug the phone in and go do other things if you go hours without putting the phone away. The app offers monthly challenges and badges to keep people coming back to the box and allows you to set up family challenges to see who can log the most time off their phone in a month. It’s a wonderful invention.
Now that we’ve had ours since January I will say that I haven’t seen my husband use the box in quite awhile. He was so good about using it for the first few months, but one of his issues during the day is that his cell phone is his work phone and he’s on the phone talking to people all day long, so he really can’t log many hours in the box during working hours. Could he be better about using it in the evenings and on weekends? Definitely. But I’ve noticed he’s gotten better about leaving his phone in a different room, it just doesn’t make it into the box.
I found myself forgetting to put my phone away this summer. I logged way too much screen time (probably while hiding from my kids) these past few months. Since school has started however, I’m finding it so nice to getting back into my usual habit of coming in from dropping kids off and putting my phone in the Aro box to get a few things done each morning without being distracted. I haven’t used the app as much lately, but I love having the central place to charge and keep our phones.
I would say it’s absolutely a great thing to have a beautiful charging box to keep our devices in and the cost of the box was totally worth it. I would say for a family to get in the habit of using it, paying for the app for a few months would be definitely worth it and then I think you could probably migrate to just using the box without the gamifying features (as long as you develop the habit first). If trying to break up with your phone usage is a goal for anyone it has definitely been a great investment for us.
**Four**
Years ago, before we had kids, my sister and her husband introduced Chuck and I to the game Dominion. It’s a card type game, there’s no board involved, and we loved it. You can play with two people, so it was great for couples, and with a group. Because you can change up the action cards you choose to use in each round, every time you play there’s a different strategy involved which makes it really fun. We taught our kids a couple years ago actually, it’s not a complicated strategy game, as long as they can read and understand some basic rules, they can probably play this one about the time they’re in 1st grade. For some reason we haven’t touched this game in a couple years but recently I sent Asher in to find a game for us to play and this is what he came back with. We’ve played a few times in the past couple weeks and I had completely forgotten how much I enjoy this particular game! He and I have played a two player game a few times and we’ve played with the rest of the family. I don’t know if anyone else hasn’t discovered Dominion, or if you used to play a decade ago but it’s collecting dust somewhere in a closet but this is your reminder to dust it off! Or if you need a fun family Christmas gift this year, I think all 4 of us would recommend this one!
**FIVE**
As I shared above, especially this time of year when we get all the schedules and calendars handed to us and we find ourselves overwhelmed with dates and details to remember, I get asked by several folks “hey what planner do you use again? Are you still using the same one? How do you use it?” For years I’ve used the same planner—the Emily Ley Simplified Planner. Some years I choose their weekly layout and some years I go with their daily layout, but THIS year, they launched a new design that I decided to try. Y’all. I am in love. It’s my new favorite. Same company, new design. I will say up front, their academic year planners that had an August 1st start date are sold out in this design, but if you are interested they launch their January 1 start date ones (in the same designs) next week I believe. They’ve always had a line of planners called the Dapper Desk, which are leatherette bound planners for a more “professional” look in case someone didn’t want their floral and colorful designs they are known for. But this is the first year they did a dapper desk weekly layout and it is the one I chose and it’s fantastic. Our joke is that I am very low maintenance in terms of money I spend on clothes, shoes, hair and make up products and home decor but I will absolutely splurge on office supplies. I figure that if it is something I am going to literally use many many times a day every day of the year I want it to be beautiful, high quality and function in the way I like so I’m willing to splurge. I keep it out on a small desk I have in the kitchen and as I walk past it many many times a day I’ll just glance at what else I said I wanted to get done that day. Having it open and in front of me all day has been the key to actually using it well.
It’s a large page, it’s an 8x11 book the size of a sheet of paper, but I love how much space there is for everything I like to write down—a list of calendar items of course, but also my meal plan for the week, a list of things to do, and a monthly calendar layout. Plus the back of the book is 39 blank lined pages for notes which I use for all kinds of things. I have a list of people I need to buy Christmas gifts for so I can jot down ideas as they come to me, I have a list of my weekly grocery staples we always need on hand so when I go make my weekly Walmart order I check that first. I keep a list of meal that are in my freezer and cross them off as I use them so I make sure I am using up the meals I made. I have all kinds of notes in the back of the planner that are so helpful to have all in one place (yes I know the notes app on the phone works the same way, but I really just like seeing things on paper!)
If anyone needs a paper planner to help have a central place for ALL the things, I have used Emily’s products for years and have loved them all. Here are a few photos of my planner in case anyone wants to see this particular one in use, but whatever tools you use to organize your life, I think the key just is to use them! These pages get messy throughout the week as I cross things out and move things around, but the point isn’t to have it look perfect, the point is to have this be a useful tool to manage our family life throughout the week.
