What's that again?

There have been SO many things I've been dying to post about but time has been a bit more scarce lately...which is true for every August!  Right now I'm at my parents house visiting and Ellie is down for a nap so I am taking full advantage to get some of my thoughts out before I explode from lack of processing :)

A big thing that's been growing in my mind this month is the whole concept of priorities.  When I was working in a traditional environment prioritizing tasks was a pretty big deal.  You don't want to waste precious time organizing your paper clips when you had a budget proposal due that afternoon.  In every interview I remember there is always at least one question along the lines of, "If you had a million things to do and only 3 hours to do it how would you determine what gets done and what doesn't?".  Okay, that's the Jen version, but the premise is the same!  At the end of the day everyone knows that there will always be a million things to do and not enough time to accomplish them all.  Systems help for sure but the reality is, you can't do it all. Naturally then, employers want employees who know how to correctly determine what's truly important and what is irrelevant in the big picture.

So we all understand prioritizing at work.  But what about at home?  See right now, since I stay home with Ellie, my home is my work and vice versa.  And I've always had personal priorities but I don't know that I've ever tried to intentionally live by them.  My personal priorities are:
1. God
2. Matt
3. Family (Ellie)
4. Family (extended)
5. Friends

There are more than this, like health, work, church, education etc., but those are my top 5.  Interestingly though when I looked at my life I realized I wasn't really living like those things that I say are most valuable to me were actually valuable to me.  My life said my priorities were:
1. Family (Ellie)
2. Work
3. Friends
4. Matt
5. Family (extended)

And yeah, God was probably #6 (for me work means my design/print company, Taylor Made Design Co., and being the music director at The Journey).  Now you may not see a problem with my priorities not lining up with my life but I did.  Because, like in a work environment, I know that my time is limited.  I cannot accomplish everything so I need to be intentional about making sure the most important things get done.  And they weren't.

Which begs the question:  Where my priorities in the wrong order or was I living them in the wrong order?  Is it truly important that God be first in my life?  Does it matter if Ellie comes before Matt?  Isn't work kind of a "have to get it done" thing, is that really avoidable?  Is it even possible to live with my priorities reflecting those values I say are important?

If you've never stopped to evaluate why your priorities are your priorities...you should!  So I spent a lot of time thinking it through and making sure I had the right list for my life.  AND making the necessary adjustments to my lifestyle to ensure I wasn't being a hypocrite.  Of course I'll be honest.  I'm still a hypocrite.  I don't have this down even a little bit.  But knowing I spent time evaluating and figuring it out makes it feel a lot more valid when I have to say "no" to something that interferes with a higher priority.

Matt has often said you can't let the urgent replace the important. But the reality is that if you allow outside forces (circumstances) to control your life you'll never have anything left for the things you value.  You'll just run around putting out fires and wasting your attention on things that don't really matter.  You have to focus on what's important and stay there.

One of my favorite lines from the book of Nehemiah is when he keeps telling the people who come to distract him (oh we need to meet with you, oh so-and-so is spreading this rumor, you get the idea), "I'm doing a very important work and cannot come down."  Over and over, that's his response!  Talk about stubborn :)  That's exactly what I have to tell myself whenever good opportunities come along to do good things that distract from what I've deemed most important in my life.

Doing something great often means saying "no" to something good (again, that's not from me, I read it somewhere).  And I believe God has called me to something great.  Not necessarily being president, although I'd be a pretty cool one.  My greatness or legacy will hopefully be born out of my priorities.  Being a wife to Matt, being a mom to Ellie and whomever else comes behind her, being a friend to my sisters who don't share the same parents but definitely share hearts...that's my wall I cannot come down from right now.

Here's where we are now.  My priorities are slowly working their way around to being in line with the things I value most.  And some of them are still in a jumble as I try to figure out which is more important to me...exercise or work? Play time or taking a shower?  Okay that last one isn't real...although when Ellie was first born...you get the idea!

How do you determine your priorities? Do you find it difficult to live by them on a day-to-day basis?