What's in a Day?

As recently as yesterday at church, I was asked how I get everything done. I'm a wife and mother, a seminary student working towards a Master's of Divinity (96 graduate hours), a homeschool teacher, administrator of a church school that works with more than 300 homeschooling families, and an associate pastor at a larger United Methodist Church. Since I get asked the question often, I'm going to attempt to share.

If the question is 'how do I do it all,' the short answer is 'I don't.' But here's how I try. The challenge is that no two days are alike, but here we go.

The day begins around 5am. The goal is an hour of Bible study and meditation, followed by exercise. Sometimes exercise has to wait until after Joseph leaves for work. He and I try to have a cup of coffee and a little conversation before he leaves in the morning. However, my aversion to alarm clocks prevents me from having one. If I fail to be roused by HIS alarm, which he shuts off as quickly as possible to accommodate his decidedly not-a-morning-person wife, he will not wake me up.

The next couple hours are devoted to seminary studies, after a quick check of the online world. Because much of my coursework is online, and we have DSL, I'm online a lot. Somewhere during this block of time, I wake my children. One of them used to be a morning person, but adolescence has adjusted his circadian rhythms. Both now need some time to wake up.

Because my children are motivated to continue homeschooling, we've made choices that allow us to do so, and they cooperate fully with our schedule. I can cover our homeschooling choices in a separate post. What's important for this post is that our curriculum choices mean the boys need my attention for 1 1/2 to 2 hours a day.

Then I'm ready to go to the office.

• On Mondays, I usually go after lunch and stay through meetings that evening.
• On Tuesdays, we start school earlier, because I go to the office for staff meeting at 10:30 and stay through meetings that evening.
• On Wednesdays, I'm in the office by lunch and through church activities that evening. Every other week, I teach a science class that meets at the church in the morning.
• On Thursdays, I do not go to the office. I teach a World History class twice a month, and Literary Analysis twice a month. In the afternoons, I work at the homeschool resource center.
• On Fridays, I do whatever is needed.

Joseph and I have divided responsibilities. It's probably a little more structured than some would prefer, but it works for us. Because I have meetings on Monday and Tuesday evenings, Joseph fixes dinner on those nights. I handle Thursday and Friday. Sunday and Wednesday, we eat at the church. Saturday we either eat out, or cook together. We rotate months with other chores, like laundry and cleaning the kitchen. We've contracted housecleaning help.

Evenings are family time--as often as possible. We have teens; they don't want to spend too much time with us. Once everyone is in bed, I finish any chores, continue seminary coursework or reading, and watch my programs on TiVo.

I go to bed around 11pm. And that's my day. I'm not sure it's helpful, but since inquiring minds wanted to know, there it is.