Ruts & Houses

I've been meaning to post about this for a while now, but we just keep coming up with new analogies/parables, whatever you want to call them. I guess rough times are good for that? Anyway, we have two that have been pretty meaningful to us recently.

The first being Ruts. Yup, like this:
This is a set of ruts, carved into stone from Pioneer wagons. Can you imagine being in the very last wagon to cross the plains and realizing how many had gone before you? It was just kind of obvious which way to go by then.

Well, we've been working on recognizing that we (Pmc and I) can create/change ruts for ourselves, as well as for our children - with just about everything we do. There are some places where there just aren't any ruts. There are some places where we are going to make deeper ruts. And there are some places where we need to create new ruts because the old ruts are too worn to be useful or headed in the wrong direction.

For example, we both strongly believe in having Family Home Evening each week. Let's say there is a place along our weekly path that is called Monday evening. At that location each week, we have a choice, either we can follow the rut that is pretty well carved out that goes toward FHE, or we can follow the rut that is a little overgrown that goes towards other things. We're doing pretty well at following the FHE rut. However, we've realized that we can be more prepared to make sure we follow that rut by preparing a lesson for FHE during the week before Monday. And, the earlier we start preparing that lesson, the easier it is to choose that direction when we get to that choice.

There are also a lot of personal ruts that we can work on, and both Pmc and I have really come to appreciate this picture coming into our minds when we make decisions. We think "which rut do I want to be the deepest, and therefore easiest to follow? Which rut to I want my children to be in?"

Next, we're going to talk about houses. I'm going to sum up the article I found which you can read here. Don't worry, even though the title sounds worrisome, I'm madly in love with Pmc, and haven't been considering leaving. I don't remember how I found the article. But it has totally worked for us. Especially since I came up with a description of my own house in conjunction with this idea.

So, essentially a man has a house, and each room in his house is for one of the roles he takes on. So there's an "employee" room, a "church calling" room, a "going golfing" room, a "watching/reading about sports" room, a "husband" room, and whatever else you can think up. Each is a separate room. When he is in one room he is totally focused on what is in that room. So, when a man is in the "husband" room, he is totally devoted to his wife and gives his full attention. So he feels like he is being an awesome husband, 'cause he is really good at that role, and he's really good at his other roles like employee and church calling because he's totally devoted to them and does the best he can - and that makes him a good husband too. Totally logical right?

Well, not exactly to a woman. A woman doesn't like being relegated to just one room. She wants to be integrated into every room, which creates emotional bonding. Pmc decided the best way to visualize this was to put a big-screen tv in each room with a feed of the wife. This way the wife has influence on the man in everything he does, they make decisions together, and the wife is emotionally satisfied.

You may ask, but men don't really want the wife in every room, that the wife will take over entirely. However, there is a safety net provided in this relationship, with no visual. Husband and wife are to come to an "enthusiastic agreement" on every decision. That way, each decision is discussed until BOTH are satisfied, and the husband feels much better knowing his wife his happy, while he's still happy too.

I'm not very good at this. Just read the article. However, after deciding that we liked this analogy, I got to thinking "what about my house?" Well, as I thought about it, I felt like my house was one big room. No walls, no privacy, just husband, kids, and homemaking. Sure I have lots of projects that I want to do, lots of goals, and creative ideas. But I felt like I was constantly trying to find a corner to hide in to give "me" some time of my own to do things. Trouble is, without some walls, I could never find it, especially with kids. So I expressed this to Pmc and he kindly suggested that it was high time we put on an addition. So now I have my nice cozy little room full of my projects and things that I want to do, with a feed of Pmc in the corner of course! This addition looks like "about an hour and a half" of time to myself each week with the car, some money, and no children or husband. Boy howdy have I made progress on myself. Furthermore, I am not hiding in corners throughout the day anymore! That makes me feel like such a better wife, mom and homemaker!