{"id":91,"date":"2011-06-20T09:08:07","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T09:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/10.131.168.108\/wordpress\/?p=91"},"modified":"2011-06-20T09:08:07","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T09:08:07","slug":"better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/2011\/06\/20\/better\/","title":{"rendered":"Better"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Blogging is good for me. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Writing helps me get stuff out of my head. &nbsp;It forces me to put words to my own issues. &nbsp;And doing that helps me to understand what&#8217;s really going on. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Like how I figured out while writing my &#8220;Frustrated Mommy&#8221; blog a while back that the real issue was my own selfishness. &nbsp;Or how writing about my logistics issue let me (first) throw a little pity party for myself and (second) get a grip on it. &nbsp;I was able to make some small changes that have made a big difference.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Mostly, I remembered to choose to be the mom again. &nbsp;Sounds dumb, maybe. &nbsp;But I had gotten pretty selfish and lazy. &nbsp;And it suddenly occurred to me as I was praying about it one morning that God had given me an assignment, for that day, to &#8220;be the mom.&#8221; &nbsp;And I could choose to accept the assignment or keep on letting things just float along. &nbsp;And as the floating wasn&#8217;t really working for us, I decided to step up again. &nbsp;I went back to purposely being the parent of my children. &nbsp;Being intentional. &nbsp;Being present. &nbsp;It was a little rough at first, I&#8217;ll admit, because I was out of the habit of being purposeful like that. &nbsp;But I kept making the choice, one moment at a time. &nbsp;And it didn&#8217;t take long for things to improve drastically.<\/p>\n<p>I also realized that part of the issue was that we were super-close to my kids (the twins, in particular) moving into a new development stage. &nbsp;We were dipping our toes into coming attractions (new verbal skills, new physical skills, a new social level, more independence), but we weren&#8217;t quite there. &nbsp;And that in-between place is hard. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It helped to start being purposeful about reading my Bible again. &nbsp;And to hear that I was not alone, that this stuff really is a season of life, that we will survive it. &nbsp;It helped me to talk it out some with Eric, too. &nbsp;And I had to do some evaluation of how I was spending my time, to really think through are the right priorities for this time.<\/p>\n<p>But the result is that we are better. &nbsp;Not perfect. &nbsp;Not on top of the logistics. &nbsp;Not totally managing my crazy life as well as I would like. &nbsp;But we are definitely better. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Thank you, Jesus. (And thanks for all your encouragement, too!)<\/p>\n<p>Happy Monday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blogging is good for me. &nbsp; Writing helps me get stuff out of my head. &nbsp;It forces me to put words to my own issues. &nbsp;And doing that helps me to understand what&#8217;s really going on. &nbsp; Like how I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/2011\/06\/20\/better\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elhogue.com\/shannah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}