Five Minutes to Your Success

When I was doing my social work internship, I came across the five-minute principle.  One of my coworkers shared with me that her son had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or more commonly known as ADHD.  She really wanted to avoid putting him on medication and so one of the techniques she used with him was to set a timer for five minutes.  If he could complete five minutes of his schoolwork without getting up, then he was rewarded with five minutes of free time.  Every time he got up before the timer went off, the timer would be reset for another five minutes with no reward.  This may sound silly to you but no matter what your attention span is everyone needs to feel the rush of completing a task.  Completing one task successfully helps spur you on to be able to complete the next task ahead of you. 

I use this same method for household chores.  Sure, after a long day at the office the last thing that you want to do is come home to dirty dishes, a pile of laundry, and a bunch of hungry family members asking you what is for dinner.  It would be so much easier to just crash on the couch for the evening and hope that you had more energy tomorrow.  However, pick one small task that you can accomplish in five minutes.  For example, see if you can unload and reload the dishwasher in five minutes … you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.  The success of completing that task will give you energy to try another five-minute task and before you know it you will be looking around amazed at how quickly you brought order to the chaos.  I am not promising that your home will look perfect or that you will cook a gourmet meal every night but if you start somewhere you will be amazed at how easily you went from stressed to success!

Learning to Love

God has taught me a lot about love through my stepchildren.  I have heard many people say that they have learned to love through their biological children.  Do I believe that God places His innate love in the hearts of parents?  Yes, we see a glimpse of God’s love in a parent’s ability to love unselfishly.  However, how many times have we seen the headlines that report parent’s doing the most awful things to their own biological children?  The Bible tells us that God is love and that we are able to love because He first loved us.  People who don’t know God can’t love like God loves.  The Bible also teaches us that love for our children are to be taught from one generation to the next.

 

God has adopted us into His family. This type of adoption was a permanent commitment on behalf of the parent, however, the child could decide at any time to leave the relationship.  What a picture this is of the love of God!  He gives us the choice to opt out of the family but He will never abandon us.  What a contrast from our society’s adoption system that says if the kid turns out to be too difficult, return them to the state.  Or if your kids give you too many problems go ahead and send them across the country to their other parent.

So back to my step-kids, my heart broke for their time, their affection, their skinned knees, and the tears streaming down their eyes.  I rejoiced at their successes and cried at their failures. They came into my life as teenagers and through their lives I was able to see how much God rejoices over our successes and cries at our mistakes.  How He loves us even when we don’t love Him back.   

Has it always been perfect?  Of course not!  Were their times that I wanted to throw up my hands in frustration?  Sure.  It is important to remember that love never fails.  When you chose to love it might be hard at times, but it is always worth it!

Family

I don’t have what some would refer to as the traditional family.  I live with my loving husband Nate and my wonderful stepson Trey.  My stepson Myles, stepdaughter Brittany and son-in-law Brandon live miles away.  We are not the dad and mom, with 2.5 kids.  We don’t have a white picket fence around our yard but we have two dogs that do their best to terrorize the neighbors!  Although not traditional, I would not trade my family for anything!

While making dinner tonight, Trey told me that homemade is “the imperfect perfection”.  It doesn’t always look like what you would find in a high quality restaurant but it sure tastes like something that you can’t get anywhere else.

People look for family in all different places and once again I go back to that thought about homemade.  Yes, family is that imperfect perfection.  Would we choose all the members of our own families?  I would guess that most would answer that question as no.  However, as imperfect as each member might be (including ourselves) there is something so comforting about being surrounded by those you love.  Our families share our greatest joys and our deepest sadness.  They know our greatest triumphs and our most devastating failures.  Yet somehow love us through it all. 

So where did the idea of family come from?  I believe that it formed in the heart of God, our loving Father.  God who loved us enough to know that we would mess it up and yet still wanted us to experience the joy that comes from having children.  God who knew that it was not good for man to be alone and He wanted man to have the companionship of a woman made just for him.