I’m a planner, by nature. If I know I have a lot coming up, I try to break it down and put it all out on paper, or my iPad, so I have running lists, and can try to keep up with everything. The problem, though, has been this very interesting middle part of my life as a woman. Let’s just say Mama ain’t got the handle on multitasking that she once had, poor girl. Not by a long shot.

I can’t juggle those lists quite the same anymore. Stuff falls through the cracks, lost and forgotten. I feel like they fly around me, beating me about the head, and if I were a cartoon character, I’d be one that had just suffered an altercation, with lines and stars swirling around my dizzy head. When I started working with Kevin, I really needed my old abilities back. I needed to be Super Planner to survive.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that I don’t really need that skill as much after all, not because I wouldn’t really benefit from it (because, hey, I would), but because there is another way that, at the end of the day, is the way I think we’re supposed to live.

I take it one day at a time.

I don’t think about, or do, anything outside what must be done that day, with the most important things first. For instance, the kids left for Florida on a Sunday, and up until that night, I had no idea what I was serving at the party we just hosted. I hadn’t even thought about it. With that party happening in less than a week, I cracked open my cookbooks and made a menu. Once the menu was made, I sat that aside and worked for two days at the office, concentrating fully on what needed to be done there. Wednesday night, I made a grocery list. Thursday I went to the grocery store and ran some errands. Friday I cooked. Saturday I cleaned house and took care of details. In the midst of all this, I have a mix of 220 Christmas cards/January party invitations that have to go out, but I didn’t cram them in each weekday night like I usually have in the past. I waited until after the office party, and they became my task for yesterday.

Not only has this new way of living my life helped me not feel quite as flustered or behind, but it’s also allowed me to focus on each day, and what’s right in front of me, with less distraction. When my kids were here, I focused on them. The old me would’ve always had the next thing on the list looming in my mind and I would’ve missed something important that I would never have gotten back. Cliché, yes, but LIFE IS SHORT. I’m over missing out on precious and priceless moments because I need to go to the drug store and the dry cleaners next Tuesday.

Seriously, join me and WORRY ABOUT THAT NEXT TUESDAY.

We can cover ourselves up in lists and plans for the future, but we really don’t know if we’ll be around to eat dinner tonight. You know, as well as I, it can all change in a second, so why worry about any more than what you need or want to get done in the next few hours?

Jesus talked about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. If you think about it, they really do seem to have a handle on things. They do what they are supposed to do each day and don’t really worry about anything, trusting that their needs will be met. I think they caught onto my new way of living early on in their lives…they learned the truth about planning from the Creator Himself.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34 NIV

“In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.” Proverbs 16:9 NIV

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?” Matthew 6:26-30 NIV