Women’s Retreat

Effectiveness of the New Plan

I have been working on my daily chore planner that I mentioned in my last post. While I haven’t managed to get all the tasks for a single day completed in that day, I do feel good about using this strategy. It has given me direction and helped me to break things down into something a little more manageable. As I continue working through the daily to-do’s, it should get easier and less time-consuming.

The Women’s Retreat

This past weekend I went on a women’s retreat with my church. It was a refreshing time of fellowship with God and Godly women. We talked about being intimate with God and the session that spoke to me the most was about idolatry. An idol isn’t necessarily a “golden calf” but anything that comes before your relationship with God.

We talked about 2 types of idols in our lives: surface idols and source idols. Surface idols are more obvious to us and those around us while source idols are the root from which surface idols come from. Here is a link that briefly describes each if you want to read a little more about this. And this link has the chart we used to describe source idols in more detail.

I learned that my source idol is comfort. Which means that I seek freedom and a lack of stress at the cost of productivity. This is why my house is constantly a mess and I tend to procrastinate on everything.

Now here is the part that was intriguing to me and kind of confusing. Because I want to improve certain areas of my life, I see myself allowing the idol of control to replace my idol of comfort. In order to let go of my need for freedom and a lack of stress, I start seeking self-discipline and standards. I fear that I will only have worth if I can get mastery over my life in the area of my home.

While my goals and dreams are worthy and even founded in scripture, I am an idolatrous if I allow them to become  more important than the relationship with my heavenly Father. As I discussed this revelation with the speaker at the retreat she affirmed that you have to find balance in life (for instance, between desiring comfort and control) in order to remove the idols that will destroy your intimacy with God. She suggested that I start each day asking God what he wants me to get accomplished with my time. By doing this simple task, I am keeping my focus on God and not my own desires.

I have started adding this prayer into my plan and I already feel more at peace as I go about my day.