If at first you don't succeed...

One of my favorite shows is CBS News' Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood. It comes on right in the middle of church, but when we go on Saturday nights I catch it Sun morning or I record it on the DVR to watch later. A couple weeks ago they aired this segment on all of the inventions and ideas in our culture that started out as failures and how failure is a very important milestone in becoming great. So, in honor of that segment here are some failures I've experienced in the past week or so:

1. Those of you who know our family very well know that we've had some serious financial issues with some real estate we haven't been able to get rid of for a few years and had some other mishaps building our new house. Before that time I was a champ at meticulously keeping a budget and paying bills on time. Since we've been struggling the past two years, I've been struggling with keeping the bills straight with not enough money to go around sometimes. It's been on my mental "to do" list since becoming a SAHM to revamp my whole bill/budget system, but I've been so focused on FLYLady and DREADING the huge pile of bill mess in our office that I messed up on paying some bills BIG TIME. I totally spaced off Josh's truck payment for a couple of months and they froze our bank account two days ago. Woops. Sorry honey. I fixed it now. My self-imposed FLYLady 15 minute activity for the next week is sorting through Mount Billuvious (pronounced bill-oooh-vee-us) and coming up with a budgeting/bill pay system that works.


2. I made this lentil and brown rice casserole last night for dinner. I put the regular spices that the recipe called for AND the half of the little spice packet that the lentils came with in it. The first time I made this about 2 months ago Josh loved it and the spices turned out wonderfully. Not so much this time. I don't know what I did wrong, but it was a heart-attack on a spoon this time. The saltiness in it was HORRIBLE. But, my sweet husband ate it anyway and said, "That's okay, babe. You tried." He went out to mow the lawn right after and I was afraid to let him go for fear of him collapsing due to the sodium-laden death casserole that he so willingly ate.




3. One of FLYLady's tips for a smooth running house is to lay your clothes out the night before. Anyone who goes to church on a regular basis knows that there is some major spiritual warfare happenin' as families get ready for church. Well, I was totally excited to put FLYLady's advice to work to combat the hectic "getting ready for church" warfare and I carefully laid out all of our clothes for the 11:00 service the Saturday night before. I even took this picture because I was so proud of myself. I tell you, getting ready for church last Sunday morning had never been so peaceful. We were all decked out and drove the 18 miles to church, arrived a stunning 15 minutes early, and as we saw a line of cars driving out of the church parking lot I quickly realized that, "Oh yeah, they did away with the 11:00 service in June." Failure. :( So, we didn't go to church because plan ahead FLYBaby me forgot that there IS no 11:00 church right now.

So, I guess the point of all of this is that I'm learning from my failures and I'm getting better with each one! I am getting to be thankful for them because although it might be one step backwards, in the long run they are teaching me a new way to take two steps forward toward being the kind of wife, mom, and Child of God that He wants me to be!