Gateway to Joy

For years my family have teased me about my planner.  Of course, I really can't blame them.  I sometimes think I can have borderline obsessive compulsive disorder and one way it can make itself known is through my planner. I have been known to write something down that I already accomplished, just so I can check it off!  But the few times I have gotten out of the habit of using it, I found that I just "spun my wheels", feeling disorganized, disoriented and discouraged.  So, even though I get teased mercilessly about it, I continue to write down each little task I want to accomplish the next day.  There is one danger though, and that is to become too engrossed in pursuit of that little check mark!

This morning I started out my morning in my usual way, walking Mark to the shop, filling his water pitchers, looking for any tickets I needed to take to the house and so on.  Mark started walking around picking up tools and saying what a mess he had out there, how many tools he was missing and the more he talked the more stressed his voice sounded.  I helped him pick up a few things, but my main objective was getting out of there and getting back to the house to start on the "list".  I said, "Well, maybe we should get up early on Monday mornings and we could come out and clean for a couple hours each week."  Then I finally stopped and listened to that still small voice telling me he's feeling stressed today, he needs my help today.  So, I took a couple hours and helped him put up some tools, and straightened his office.  I still think the Monday idea is a good one, but when I stopped to remember that my biblical role as a wife is to be my husband's helper, I saw that he needed some help and some company right then, not several days later!

I have always loved Elisabeth Elliot www.elisabethelliot.org and her writings.  She always says that one of the ways we serve God is to "die to self" and the way we do that is to do the thing we should do instead of the thing we  want to do, (with a cheerful attitude)  It always amazes me though, when ever I do that, the thing I ought to do becomes the thing I want to do.  I actually enjoyed helping Mark clean this morning and there wasn't a single thing on my list that I would have rather been doing. Another Elisabeth quote "Anything, if offered to God, can and will become your gateway to joy"  Even something as simple and easy as cheerfully helping clean a shop, cheerfully cooking dinner, cheerfully wiping a little nose a dozen times a day, cheerfully reading the ABC library book again, cheerfully_______________ you fill in your "gateway to joy!"