Living Intentionally: Scrap Your Priorities

For the next few weeks we would like to feature some thoughts on this year's theme: The Intentional Woman. The focus will be what the author calls "the counterintuitive principles of living intentionally," which are listed in today's reading. Also featured at the end are some theme products you might consider using for your fall events.

Scrap Your Priorities

by Ellen Miller

I think the concept of living intentionally is a bit counterintuitive. Although many of us grasp the big picture, sometimes we're a bit foggy on how best to go about living on purpose rather than just having life happen to us.

The counterintuitive principles of living intentionally include:

• Fake it
• Scrap your priorities
• Stay behind
• Break a hip
• Whine
• Be confused
• Disappoint someone
• Spend it all today

If you're reading this book and know in your heart you're not living intentionally, there's an excellent chance that your priorities are out of whack. Assess your situation to determine what self-imposed duties are robbing you of joy. Then develop a vision and a plan to get to the place where you're experiencing life-not just moving from task to task. It's a destination worth planning for, and if you won't listen to your significant other, maybe you'll take a tip from your girlfriend (me).

Following are a few priorities I scrapped when I was raising children, building a career, and dealing with a three-hour daily commute:

• Exercise. I gained 15 pounds as I climbed the corporate ladder. I sacrificed physical firmness for a firm foundation for my career.
• Dinner. To complement my healthy lifestyle of no exercise, we picked up fast food two nights a week. Not an organic vegetable on the table, but we enjoyed our meals together at the kitchen table every night. Spinach was sacrificed for quality time with the family.
• Laundry. I bought pink towels for Shauna and blue towels for Scott and taught them both to do their own laundry at the ages of 11 and 14. If they didn't wash it, they wore it dirty. Saturday became a fun day-not a work day-and nobody turned me in to Child Protective Services.
• Continued self-development. My continued learning consisted of helping with science projects, slogging through eighth grade algebra, and keeping up with teen lingo. Self-development was sacrificed for self-preservation.

So think clearly and exercise self-control. Look forward to the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world (1 Peter 1:13, NLT).

Excerpted with permission from The One Year Book of Inspiration for Girlfriends by Ellen Miller, ©2009, Tyndale House Publishers.

Theme Products (Order from www.women.ag.org)

I Mean It! tract. Item #735487 (English); Item #735488 (Spanish).

I Mean It! bracelets. Item #735486.