Motivation

I have lost my motivation.  Is that something you lose, or something you make?  Either way, I have very little right now.  For a few weeks I was getting up early, letting the dogs out, coming in, reading scriptures, some light exercising, and then doing my computer stuff, all before the kids woke up.  Now, I'm lucky to be up before the kids.  My alarm goes off, and I go back to sleep, or to at least laying in bed longer.  The worst part is when I can't go back to sleep, I know I won't go back to sleep, and yet I still don't get up.  This bout of laziness is just horrible!

I know the best thing to do would be to just push through it.  When my alarm goes off, get up and get moving.  Make myself DO something productive, anything productive.  Where is my willpower?  It's a vicious cycle.  The more I don't do anything, the less motivation I have to start, but once I do start, I know it will be easier to do it again.  With the days getting shorter, though, I'm missing the sun as my cue to awaken.  I'm sure there has to be some kind of scientific study that states it's harder for people to wake up early when the sun is coming up later and later.  Maybe I can find that study and see if they have any advice for me.

Just tell me and I'll do it

As a Mom, don't you just love it when you step into the bathroom and all of a sudden all of your kids have questions that need answered RIGHT NOW!  I know I can't be the only one this has happened to.  This happened, again, to me the other day.  My son was trying to ask me a question.  Well, normally I am pretty good at understand 4 year old speak, and my 4 year old does speak fairly clearly, but through a door when I have something else on my mind, I wasn't hearing him very well.  I was trying to tell him to just wait a few minutes, I would be out soon and then I could answer his question.  Then, I heard very clearly through the door "Mom, just tell me and I'll do it!"  I did finally understand what he was asking me, and I gave him an answer, but his response really stuck with me.  It impressed itself so firmly in my mind that I had to take a dry-erase marker that was near by and write it on my mirror so I wouldn't forget.  (Hey, having dry-erase markers in the bathroom really is not that strange, is it?)  It's now been there for over a week and I keep looking at it. 

The thing is, I know I could have told my son just about anything and he would have done it.  He was asking me where to put the shells when he peeled his hard-boiled egg.  I could have told him to peel it outside and he would have done it.  I could have told him to put the shells into a bowl, peel it over the trash, or put them all into a plastic bag to scatter in the rocks of the driveway and he would have done it.  It wouldn't have mattered how silly they may have sounded to him, he would have done what I told him.  How often are we as willing to listen?

How often do we pray or ask for advice, but we are only willing to do what we are told if it fits in with what we want to do?  We pray for guidance and assistance, but then when we get our answers we decide maybe we didn't really need help, that couldn't be what we need to do.  My son may not have understood the reason for pealing his egg outside (so the shells didn't make a mess inside), but he would have trusted me and done it.  Do we have enough trust to just go forward and do it?  I'm not sure I do, but when Jesus told us to be as little children, I think may have been part of what he meant.  I know that thanks to my son's innocent remark I will be thinking more about my willingness to do and maybe quit trying to guess the reasons why and just trust.