The Why

It's been twenty days. 2-0. TWENTY. Twenty days since I've had restaurant food. Twenty days since I've stopped through the drive-through. Twenty days since my kids have captured the coveted happy meal toy only to lose interest by the time we hit the car. Twenty days since we've grabbed a Sonic happy hour drink. Twenty days since I've been inside Target. (gasp! yes, for real) Twenty days.

On the one hand, its not been difficult at all. We spend our weekends doing the normal weekend things like catching up on laundry, playing games together, doing the grocery shopping, trying to survive snow-apocalypse and snow-apocalypse the second. You get the idea. There isn't near as much temptation on the weekends as I thought there would be. The week though, that's another story. We're in the thick of it during the week. There's the meetings and the unexpected things that come up. There's the exhaustion that the work week brings. There's homework and activities and volunteer sign up lists and more meetings and somewhere in there, oh yea, we all have to eat. I almost did it. I almost caved. I was rushing from work to a meeting with one of my kids' teachers after school. This meeting lasted until twenty minutes before my next meeting, 10 miles away. I drove like Mario (abiding every safety law of course) to drop my kiddos off at home all the while knowing the easiest, best, fastest thing to do would be to stop by those blessed golden arches and grab myself some greasy french fries which were sure to make me calm down and be ultra productive at my next meeting. But, I didn't. I drove the kids home, my husband prepared them leftovers and I grabbed an apple and was on my way. I'm sure the entire room could hear my stomach complaining. Calling out to me in all its no-spend agony that it NEEDED those French fries I had avoided earlier. It needed the convenience and the accessibility. It needed the panic. It fed on the feeling of chaos. But, that's the thing. There doesn't have to be the panic and the chaos. Yes, there will certainly be the exhaustion, the unexpected, but I'm learning to deal with it differently. I'm learning to continue wise decision making in spite of unplanned events. I'm learning to not let circumstances control my life. There it is. The big "WHY". I'm in control, of the things I can control. I'm not in control of the length of meetings, or how many places I will be expected at during the week. I'm not in control of how much homework the kids will have or their mood when they arrive home. I'm not in control of how late my husband will work, or if he'll be called out in the middle of the night. I'm not in control of any of it. But I am in control of me, my actions, my decisions, what I put in my mouth, what I spend my money on. I'm in control of that. So, I'm learning to make better decisions with what I can control.

This whole journey. This long-365 day journey is not an experiment in deprivation. I have yet to give up diet coke. Just saying. It is an experiment in better decision making. There are SO many activities we have inside our house that encourage family time. We don't need to be seeking family time entertainment elsewhere. We just don't. There are SO many wonderful, flavorful meals to be made at home. Laughing together around the Island, while we all belt out the lyrics to our favorite songs and working together to make dinner. We don't need Minskey's pizza to have family dinner. (I know, its shocking and I'm still trying to convince myself of this one) We have a closet full of board games, bookshelves packed full of books, we have Amazon Prime and Vudu filled with options to watch for family movie night. We have a school room/art room literally spilling with items to make crafts and cards and color while talking about our days. We have so much filling this house that I was purposeful in picking out. So many items within these walls that were purchased to encourage family time, so it's time to spend this year intentionally taking that family time and utilizing it as much as possible. Instead of filling my calendar with to-do's and then sitting back and wondering why we didn't have time for family games or reading this week, why the seven days sped past like a bullet train without me playing with the three precious humans I created. Instead of standing in the middle of the room watching life spin past me in a blur of feeling like I'm being pushed and pulled this way and that by the circumstances, I'm yelling out at the top of my lungs "STOP!" Desperately crying out to the blur to pause. Grasping at my kids, holding their faces between my hands and promising with every ounce of my being to be present. To be here. To be aware, to be WITH them. To be in control of what I can control. To teach them to slow down. To teach them to be in control, of their time, of their money, of their emotions. To create as part of their memories, family time, cooking dinner together, game nights, movie nights, coloring around the table chatting about anything and everything. I guess you could say our no-spend year has turned into a spend-everything year. No-spend on material things. No-spend money. No-spend on items we really don't need. But Spend my time. Spend my energy, spend my intentionality. Spend it all on them. Spend it on investing into my children. It will now forever be known as our Spend-all year.