Category: just an idea (Page 2 of 2)

Currently changing my life: Bedtime routine

Perhaps this post is a tad premature – we’re still in the early stages of creating this ritual. But my excitement for how our evenings have shifted is so great, I can hardly contain the words. Also, a strong sense that no one in this world does things exactly as I tell her gives me freedom to offer a jumping off point as opposed to the solution to change your entire life, forevermore. 

The Background

  1. I hate bedtimes. It’s my least favorite part of the day because I have the least amount of patience and they have the most energy to ignore what I say. Long before I read Glennon I referred to bedtime as a lifesize version of whack-a-mole , making the ordeal excruciatingly long. I know this is normal for all small children but it doesn’t decrease my frustration. I’ve added our foot and breath practice after all stories are read, teeth are brushed, potties are visited, blankies are found, drinks are drunk and prayers are prayed. I turn down the lights so afterwards I give a kiss, a hug and walk out the door.
  2. I’ve tried to become a tad better about using my DoTerra oils to enhance our health. This became an easy place to began to integrate oils, specifically OnGuard (feet) and lavender (forehead), in our routine.
  3. I recently shared how a shift in my own sleep has made a world of difference to me personally so I began to examine what would translate well for the children. One of these things is rubbing the head and feet – the body’s positive and negative poles – before bed to help release the day’s work.
  4. I appreciate the sentiment of taking “a few cleansing breaths” yet I’ve always lacked the practice. Because children’s imaginations tend to be stronger than our own, I decided to use the breath practice as an end to our day to help on multiple levels. For me, this becomes a spiritual practice as much as a physical one, a practice anticipate shifting and evolving as they and their understanding of the world and God grows through the years. We still say our prayers so our breaths are an active anticipation of God’s work in our lives.

The Foot Practice 

Most of the time, these are one-on-one moments, but at times of flying solo in the bedtime hour, we do the foot rubbing as a group and the breathing in individual rooms.

First, I lather my hands with a few drops of neutral oil (coconut will work) and just a drop of OnGuard. I rub each foot individually – I pull on their toes gently, rub my thumb on the top of the foot between each of the toes, rub all over the bottom with close attention to have a few long strokes down the inside of the sole, and I use my knuckles to rub from to to heel to give the entire foot stimulation. I end each foot with three light fingertip strokes, toes to heel. This takes only a few minutes, but my kids are very receptive.

Instead of telling you anything about reflexology and the benefits of rubbing your tootsies, I’ll let my brother-in-law Chad explain it. He’s got more education and training. I’m just telling you my kids love it.

I also use a drop of lavender on my thumbs and rub their foreheads, down the sides of their face and under their eyes – all around the sinus cavities. Because we’re all fighting off a massive amount of mucus, they found this very helpful, especially before bed, to help clear their breathing.

The Breath Practice

I chose 3 breaths because I love random rules and the numerology involved with Christian and Jewish prospective favors 3 and 7, but 7 seemed like a lot (for me, I will be doing this x4). So choose your number.

The first breath, I ask the kids to gather in the day. Reach down to the toes, out to the fingertips and up to the head and grab all the pieces of the day. All our words, all our thoughts, all our frustrations and fears. I tell them that as we take a deep breath in, we gather those together to make a ball in our center, and as we breathe out we imagine them leaving us. We envision the day leaving us like smoke coming out ears (H boy loves that imagery). Sometimes I ask if we need to do it again, just in case we missed any spots.

For the second breath, we breathe in God. We replace the day with God’s presence. I tell them that we breathe in God and as we breathe out, imagine God sitting down in our heart, living inside of us.

For the third breath, we breathe in Jesus. I know, a tad redundant theologically, but I wanted 3 and this started on the fly. So we breathe in Jesus and as we exhale we imagine him moving down to our feet, so he is present wherever we go the next day. We imagine him moving into our hands, to be a part of whatever work we do. We have him go up into our heads with our thoughts and what we see, hear and say tomorrow. We’re bringing Jesus into our days by visualizing his presence throughout our being.

One morning, after having added our breaths to bedtime, the beginnings of an argumentative ride to school was in the works. I nipped it by offering to do our breaths, which the children gleefully agreed. On this trip, we did God & Jesus in the same breath and for our third breath we breathed in kindness, asking it to infuse us. Then we talked about how if we’re filled with kindness we would be able to show it to other people. We talked about the ways in which we could be kind to others and I asked them to look for ways that morning to be kind. A really good mom would ask them on the way home how they did, but I have lackluster follow through skills.

I like the idea of expanding the practice to include a quality (in my mind, that would be the fruit of the Spirit) for the kids to look toward. Sometimes broad, sweeping generalities are tough for our little minds to grasp, but smaller chunks of familiar ideas are more digestible. So if you decide upon your own practice, you might use one of these qualities or intentions (as my yogis would say) to include.

My bedtime practices have not completely absolved me of bedtime frustrations. Someone inevitably bounce out of bed to ask something. Yet we all end the day in more peace – including me. They relax, knowing the sun has set on our day. It’s become a punctuation mark to symbolize that this is done and tomorrow we begin anew.

I hope it blesses your family in its own unique way.

I’m shocked I didn’t win

We even bought 2 tickets, likely in case we left the winner for the next guy in line and we didn’t want to miss out by “just one.” But the time for the draw has come and gone and my husband didn’t wake me up, nor was there a new car minivan in my driveway this morning, so I’d guess it’s safe to say that these 2 pieces of paper aren’t going to taste nearly as good as the Chipotle he would’ve bought. 

But who, in the past 24 hours, hasn’t played the “If I won” game? I mean, $640 million is a lot of money. The thought that building a million dollar house would be one of my big spends… well, then I’d still have $639 to go. When JJ and I played the “how would you spend it” game last night, a boat and college education was on the list. Blah blah. Pants that fit for me. (OH! MY! What a pickle if I’d won as it’s still during Lent. I’d have to hold out on my spending spree!)
Everyone always lists out “give to charity” on their spend, but I started thinking about what that looked like – just add that to the list of ways I’m a freak. I know so many people in ministry and I’d love to be able to support them in different ways. But $639 million (remember, I built the house) could potentially change the world. At least, someone’s. 
I decided on the way north that I’d invest a good sum to solving Hardin County’s problem of heroin trafficking and addiction. Between my limited interactions with those caught in the world of the addiction and the regular reports on WKTN of overdose and arrests, I strongly feel this problem needs addressed. I’m sure lots of good people in the area want to see change (several churches have had rallies and stand on street corners with signs trying to bring awareness), so I wondered, nearly aloud, what several million dollars could do to bring healing. I’m tired of seeing “Drugs bring Death” signs in the windows and knowing it’s true. 
I decided that in bringing together a roundtable (sheriff, mental health professionals, community leaders, business owners, educators, pastors, poverty-mindset gurus and former addicts themselves) we’d discuss how we could equip the entire community to bring healing. While the sheriff might get a larger staff (largely to focus on targeting dealers as opposed to addicts themselves), the focus of the group would be about a trickle-down effect. 
The general tendency is to throw some money at “professionals” and outsource. Perhaps build a large facility that those suffering could “come to” for  help. But I’m firming up my stance that places and programs don’t change people – people change people. These kinds of nasty, cyclical, crippling situations can’t be solved by offering someone a free this or that. And programs simply organize people. So let’s focus on people. 
I know next to nothing about addiction (I was going to crack a joke about coffee, but that’s just not even funny to try to draw a comparison). But in my experience, when I need to make major life changes,  I need people who support me. I need those who challenge me. I need those who walk beside me and tell me it’s okay if I need to sit down and rest. I need people who believe in me, not in the sense that my worth is dependent upon me changing, but that I’m worth investing in to see change. 
A major hole in our system is the way people build community. Those in the rings of drugs and crime know one another. Users seek friendships with other users. So even those who have that gut leading that things need to change, and they want to change, rarely have a large circle of people to draw them toward the actions that will bring about change. For some, life outside of addiction is a foreign concept. Not only do they not know how to live it, they lack awareness that a whole world lives by a different set of rules and norms. 
Every single heroin addict in Hardin County lives by someone. They share a property line. Even if they live by another addict, that addict lives by someone. Somewhere along the line, someone who is living clean and healthy is encountering someone who isn’t. So what if the community decided that it wasn’t going to let a crippling disease infect its body anymore. What if the churches and civic groups and the library and the mothers groups and the Elks and the Y and the coffee shop and the Mexican restaurant (Heavens! There’s only 8 places in the county to go! This can’t be that hard!) were provided means to help their people, their customers, their members, learn to seek justice and love mercy? What if we organized our people to, using the incarnational words of Eugene Peterson, “move into the neighborhood” on a regular basis. Just using basic math – there are more of “us” than “them”(what awful language, writer!), imagine the results. If each addict had one person calling them once a week. 
Is it foolproof? Nope. Would well-meaning people get taken for a ride, treated badly, scorned, or possibly even hurt? Absolutely. 
But with even a small sum of money, we can build a house or we can build a future. In this situation, there’s no such thing as “live and let live.” It’s “live and let die” if we choose hide our eyes. And it’s not addict deaths; such a infestation has the power to suck the life out of even healthy hosts. 
Or, I could just buy a yacht. But changing the world sounds so much more exciting than just seeing it.  
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