The Honey Bee Press October - December 2013 | Page 5

Page 5

Honey Bee Press

Balancing Act: How a Principal Uses Key Principles to Manage—by Dr. Erika Lee

Planning – It is imperative that you have a
plan when children are involved. Put together
a weekly/monthly schedule and post it in a
place where everyone in your home can see
it. Our schedule, menus, A/B day school
schedule, and all activities are located on our
kitchen door, where everyone seems to drop
off everything on my clean island daily. ?
Plan a menu for the week and ensure that
you have all of the ingredients beforehand or
you will end up calling out for pizza. In
addition, iron all of the uniforms or school
clothes for the week so that you are not
searching for those items on your way out of

the door in the morning. (Been there, done
that). Have a set place and time for
completing homework assignments. Provide a
healthy snack upon arrival from home and set
aside a few moments for everyone to debrief
(including you).

of carryout, but it’s ok. Learn to shake it
off and move forward. Your children will
forget their books and homework
sometimes, but that’s ok too. Life will go
on. It happened to me the first week of
school and we survived!

Praying – Start each morning with some
alone time with God to give the day over to
Him along with your plans. Ask that His will be
done and that you have the energy and
strength for the day. If you are not feeling
your best, try going to bed earlier, exercising,
or taking a multi vitamin. I have found that
when I am grumpy or tired, my entire
household suffers. You will find that when you
give the day over to God in prayer, He has a
way of making it all work together for our
good. Self-care is essential and it begins with
a healthy prayer life.

Over the years, I have learned that
parenting is the most exciting and can
sometimes be the most exhausting
journey in life; the key is to “let go and let
God.”
Image courtesy of Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The key to ministering to the whole child is
BALANCE. If you are like me, I struggle with
trying to balance preparing healthy meals,
remembering which child has soccer and
which has karate on Thursdays, completing
homework and spending quality time as a
family. Can I get an AMEN! I am learning the 3
P’s that will help me stay on track, Planning,
Praying and Patience.

Patience – Finally, be patient with your
children and with yourself. Sometimes you
will forget to wash that load of uniforms/
clothes and other times, dinner does consist

Too Much Stuff: If it Clutters you Down, Try These Secrets to Simplifying—by Mayo Mathers
Several years ago while on vacation, our family ate at a restaurant that claimed to have
the largest buffet in the United States. We
swarmed the mind-boggling array of culinary
delights as though we'd never seen food before. By the time we finished gorging ourselves, we could barely walk out of the restaurant.
Unfortunately, our restaurant experience
reflected my lifestyle at the time: excessive
possessions, commitments, goals, and desires. While our house had reasonable storage space, our belongings had expanded
from the attic to the garage and beyond. My
daily calendar was filled with back-to-back
meetings for church and other ministry functions and civic groups. And they all had to be
woven around family and work! My cluttered
life left me no significant time to spend with
God, and fractured my family time. But I had
no clue how to begin creating more physical,
emotional, and spiritual space in my life.
Then, one morning I read in my Bible, "Watch
out! Be on your guard against all kinds of
greed; a man's life does not consist in the
abundance of his possessions" (Luke 12:15).
I'd never considered myself greedy, yet my
home was filled with more clothes than I ever
wore, more dishes, books, gadgets, and
knickknacks than we ever used. Was God
telling me to simplify my overcrowded existence?
I thought of a church family who'd adopted a

Romanian girl. She'd spent her first five years
in an orphanage, and after living in America
for a few months, her new father asked her
how she liked it. "Oh, Daddy!" she said, laughing. "I love America. In Romania we had no
stuff. But in America WE HAVE STUFF!"
Like the little girl, I liked my stuff, but if God
saw my excess as greediness, it needed to be
eliminated.
I immediately set to work to declutter my
house, only to find my stuff had a stronger
hold on me than I'd realized. So I focused on
the area of my greatest excess: my closet. I
love shoes and owned more than 50 pairs.
The thought of parting with any of them was
painful. First, I boxed up all but one pair of
each color and moved them to the garage.
That way, if I went into shoe withdrawal, I
knew where to get a quick fix.
To my surprise, once the shoes were out of
sight, I never thought of them again. So I did
the same with my clothes and accessories. I
boxed them up, moved them to the garage,
then eventually passed them on to a secondhand store.
The more spacious my closet became, the
stronger my sense of freedom grew. Before,
when my alarm clock went off in the morning,
the first thing I faced was a jumbled closet. It
made my day feel jumbled before it even
started.

After the successful closet campaign, I advanced the battle to the bathroom, cleaning
out makeup drawers (why have six tubes of
lipstick when I only wear one?), medicine
cabinets, and cleaning supplies. I started
severely limiting the array of choices in my
home.
I was shocked at how much time had been
devoured by the upkeep of all these unnecessary possessions. My growing sense of
freedom and time was exhilarating!
My next step was to limit my shopping excursions. Most of my excess was the result
of casual shopping. Going to the store for a
jug of milk, I'd return home with a pair of
sale earrings from the drugstore next door.
Now I limit myself to shopping once a week
for groceries, household supplies, clothes—
everything. One shopping trip a week doesn't leave much time for casual shopping.
My success at decluttering made me take a
hard look at the other areas in my life. My
calendar was chronically overbooked with
too many commitments. A critical, prayerful
look at my commitments showed me ones
that were unnecessary. I resigned my position in a local speaking organization and
looked for other things to prune from my
schedule, asking God to guard the time I
freed up, filling it only as he directed.
I also listed the things of greatest importance to me. To my surprise, my list was