Don’t you just hate how most blogging Mamas make their houses look like everything is perfect and beautiful and nothing goes wrong? lol….Blogs make it look this way because we like to share the good news or the things we are most proud of but not necessarily the things we are ashamed of or the things that we don’t want others to know. I mean I don’t think our entire lives should be blogged but the reality is we are all imperfect humans trying to achieve perfection in some ways.
On All Saints Day, Father gave a homily on the Saints where he recalled the vast number of people who had been beatified or canonized during Pope John Paul II’s pontificate. He explained the reason for this, Blessed John Paul II wanted to make it very clear that the Lord calls us all to Heaven and hence all to be Saints. This is why he proclaims so many as saints during his pontificate, he wanted us to see that saints were like us, they were seeking the same things as us, to be saints, just that here on Earth they were able to achieve marvelous things – one day at a time.
This got me thinking about my life and the things I’d like to accomplish and the stumbling blocks I sometimes create on my own because, “life happens!” I realized too that one of the many benefits of being a blogging Mama is accountability. Maybe you aren’t holding me accountable but for some reason I feel like if I publish it on my blog, I need to keep up my end of the promise and do it. Plus, it makes me think of what kind of example I am setting for my kids. My goal is to Raise Little Saints, the main purpose for this blog and hence, it’s name….so to do so, I believe, I need to set a good example to my children by goal setting and achieving.
A good friend of mine who is discerning her vocation (she is single and contemplating becoming a nun) had a conversation last night. She, in her quest to hear God’s voice, is going to do a 40 Day Fast but is scared to fail and not make it the 40 days. Since I’ve done 40 Days for Priests where we prayed as well as fasted and abstained from worldly things, my advise to her was to take it a week at a time, set up small goals. Her and I have similar types of spiritual blocks, we set ourselves up for failure by setting spiritual goals that are too high and far to reach. Which is why I was able to give her this piece of advise, one that I needed to hear for myself, isn’t that funny? “It is in the small steps that we achieve greatness”, I believe Blessed Mother Teresa used to say. 🙂
A couple of months ago I stumbled on Mama Jenn’s amazing idea. She, like I feel, holds herself accountable when she blogs about something so she started this great idea for blogging Mamas. She calls it “Mama’s Mission of the Month“! Her hope is “that this will help me {and you} follow through on some of the goals that we have set for the month”! So, if you are a mama and you want to join in, check out the intro post over at Mama Jenn!
I’d like to add further that if you don’t have a blog and would like to participate you can feel free to add your Missions in the combox of my monthly missions 🙂 This way you can participate even if you don’t have a blog and don’t care to start one.
I will post my Mission of the Month on the 1st of each month, I will link my post to Mama Jenn’s monthly mission post (she has a linky available until the 5th). On each subsequent post you will not only put your mission but also your accomplishments.
When you post the new mission for the next month, you will list your Missions Accomplished under this:
and hopefully not need to list them under this, but sometimes life happens and you might need it (and that is what next month is for right?):
Mama Jenn says, “Your mission can be as big or as small as you would like it to be…just be sure that it is something that you can realistically accomplish! Now, I must be clear, this is meant to encourage you to accomplish some of those things that you may not have otherwise accomplished. This is NOT intended to bring condemnation of any sort! If you don’t accomplish your mission…no worries…give it a shot the following month.”
These are my missions for the month of November:
1. Get up at 6:30AM.
2. Get to bed by 10:30PM.
3. Update the Chore Chart now that the kids are ready for new jobs (smaller kids ready for more responsibilities).
4. Finish reading Raising Real Men for Timberdoodle.
5. Keep up with reading and using Magnificat on a daily basis to start and end my days with prayers.
6. Go to daily Mass.
7. Get to Co-Op in time for the Rosary which isn’t mandatory so I use that time to get there instead of being there :(.
8. Purge toys and clothing by giving the good things away to those who need them.
9. Stick to my daily schedule with the kids as much as possible (I know things happen but I really need to be more in this).
10. Catch up with all the reviews I need to do for this blog (I have a box full of goodies).
So what do you say? Want to join me in this?
Friends who are Raising Little Saints like we are and
joining me on the Monthly Missions:
Are you in? Leave me a link in the combox to your blog where your Mission is and I’ll link it up to mine! 🙂
Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!
We have made these choices for our family simply because they have been our choices, not because we want or need validation from others. I often wonder why people feel they have to comment at all? We do feel blessed at how God has chosen to form and grow our family and we love to talk about adoption. We also hope in some very small way that we can encourage others to consider adoption. It really was the whole point of making our blog public so that people can see, even though we are not biologically related, we still are a real family in every sense of the word.
