One Simple Secret to Effective Time Management This Week

When I turn down Creamery Road, I pass, yeah, surprising —  the old creamery.

Pass the the creamery that’s now abandoned, the window eyes all punched out.

How did they all look, those silvery pails of milk that once lined up by the door, their tins lid hats pulled on tight, so not one white drop spilled.

But isn’t as much milk lost through a pinhole here, a pinhole there, one little drip lost after another — as in the knocking over the whole silly pail?

That is what follows me all the way home:

A pail with a pinhole loses as much as the pail pushed right over. A whole life can be lost in minutes wasted, small moments missed.

I unpack the van, haul in the door with baggage of my own. I’ve messed things up today and focused on the unhelpful and ugly instead of the beautiful and beneficial.

I don’t know why I waste time with worry in a life that’s too short to lose.

Regret and crying over spilled milk only pokes more hole in the pail.

The house is so full of life.

I put bags down on the counter.

Hope shows me her knitting. The stitches feel like hope.

The boys explode raucous over this game of chess by the fire — yep, the likes of us make even chess into a rowdy, contact sport here. Then sit with Shalom for a moment with all these strings and knots of her own that she’s determined to make into something warm. The hands on clocks are always bound hands: You are the only one who gets to decide what you’ll do with your time.

Stir soup. Bank lasagnas away in the freezer. Watch Mama slip her silver needle through the weave, minute thread flashing, tying through it all. Mind the moments and life will take care of itself.

The whole bunch of irises on the table smile.

I don’t want to lose a full life by letting the minutes leak away.

A pail with a pinhole loses as much as the pail pushed right over. A whole life can be lost in minutes wasted, small moments missed.

How we spend our time now — determines what gift we’ll get to unwrap for all of eternity.

There’s no time for fleeting distractions… and there’s time to turn everything quiet and simply focus on his eyes, the depth of his eyes, when he’s telling me what happened, and to make that call and answer her big question and get that one card to the mail and laugh at the 1,983rd knock-knock joke before that last kid walks out the door.

The best use of time is to freely love.

The best way to love is to spend time.

The best time to love is always right now.

And Grace? Grace is strong enough to carry not only what you’ve done, but what you never got done, the things that can weigh heaviest of all.

I could catch the moments, the milk of the moments all here, the graces falling, His saving grace catching me —

these gleaming pots right full to the brim.

 

 

Ephesians 5:16

making the most of every opportunity…

A pail with a pinhole loses as much as the pail pushed right over.

A whole life can be lost in minutes wasted, small moments missed.

“And this, this is the only way to slow time: When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here. I can slow the torrent by being all here. I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment. Weigh down this moment in time with attention full, and the whole of time’s river slows, slows, slows.“  ~ One Thousand Gifts

Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts? Dare you to Joy !  Take the dare to Fully Live! 

1. Grab the free JOY DARE Calendar with 3 daily prompts to go on a scavenger hunt for God’ gifts … {or write down any gifts you choose. Use the free app.} 2. Count 3 gifts a day and you have over #1000gifts in 2013. Jot them down in the  new numbered One Thousand Gifts devotional journal — The Farmer’s writing in his with a red pen and daily – the numbers in the journal already there! Motivating…  3. Share your gifts everyday in our beautiful Facebook community to enter everyday for the monthly $100 Amazon draw (or link to your blog post with your list of gifts). 4. Count #1000gifts in 2013 and enter to win a Nikon DSLR camera with lens. Slow Down. Savor Life. Give thanks. Believing something is one thing. But the Best only comes when you decide to Be Living it. Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.

Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!

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Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}