Juggling Rest and Responsibilities– June Leadership Tip – #243

Every second Thursday of the month, one of our MomCo staff members will teach a leadership tip or principle they’ve learned and want to share with you. This month, Jennifer Iverson gives us some encouragement and tips to be a mom and leader during the chaos of summer. 

You can also find our cohosts on Instagram: @andreafortenberry, @ivymamma and @sherri_crandall.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to the Momco Leadership Podcast. We believe that life and leadership are better in community. We're here to equip and encourage you as a leader and mom. We'll talk about real issues and practical tools to help you grow in your leadership, motherhood, and faith.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Hi leaders! As you can tell, I'm sitting in my car right now. We're on vacation, and I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about a leadership tip. Sometimes it's chaotic, sometimes it's overwhelming, sometimes it's well planned, but either way, you have survived May. And on the one hand, that feels like an accomplishment, but now it's summer, and that brings an entire new set of complications as a mom and a leader. And if you're a working mom, that brings even more challenges. I was just chatting with a co-worker the other day who has signed her kids up for camp this summer thinking that it was gonna help her get her work done, but now she's spending a ton of time as an Uber driver trying to work in coffee shops and parking lots and coordinating child care with her spouse. It's like trying to plan some government activity or something. There's so many details and so many schedules. And in the midst of all of that chaos, here at Momco, we often tell you now is a great time to rest. And rest may mean actual rest, like taking a vacation, but it may also just mean taking a rest from the schedule you normally have as a leader the rest of the year. You can't operate at 100% all of the time. So a wise woman shared with me how we juggle a lot of responsibilities as moms, like juggling balls, but some of the balls are rubber and they'll bounce if we drop them, and some are glass and shatter if we drop them. So I want you to take a few minutes and think about all of the things that you're juggling right now, heading into the summer or just in general. And then I want you to go back and honestly look at what is rubber and what is glass and take a look at the things that you absolutely have to do. One of the rubber balls on my list, always on my list, is house cleaning and meal making. They just don't end. I think that's the thing. The house is never clean and people are always hungry. I honestly thought that at this point in my life I would have meal planning completely figured out, but I don't. And with six kids of my own, that's a lot of mess, a lot of laundry, and a lot of food. So I want to give you, with those things in mind, a couple of ways that I let those rubber balls bounce. So the first thing is together with the kids, we make a weekly menu of dinners and I post them on the fridge so that nobody will ask me what's for dinner that day. They can look on the fridge and see what's for dinner. Some of my kids in their teen years would look and see what was for dinner and decide they were gonna figure out how to go to their friend's house because they didn't like that dinner. And some of my kids would be like, I gotta invite somebody for dinner because this is an amazing dinner. Then I also kept uh things that you would have, let's call it like a continental breakfast, on hand so that they can feed themselves. Even my kids as young as five can figure out how to heat up a frozen pancake in the microwave or pour their own cereal or leftover pizza. That's good any time of the day. But they knew breakfast was on their own. Lunch was also on their own because normally they'd be at school for lunch. So there were sandwich makings, there were leftovers. I am positive we kept Tyson in business with frozen chicken nuggets, which, by the way, are far superior cooked in the oven versus the microwave, but my six-year-old could run the microwave, and they did not have the culinary palette to complain about it. Besides, we all know chicken nuggets are really just a vehicle for ketchup or ranch. So lunch and breakfast on their own. Fruit was available at any time, those little packages of cheese crackers, which I'm sure are full of ingredients that I can't name, but they are also available at a price per package that was so ridiculously low. I don't care. So all of those food things are related to a rubber ball that I can let bounce. Yes, my kids had to be reminded to clean up after themselves. And yes, sometimes somebody filled up on too many crackers, and I had to remind them they should really only eat one package a day. Fruit, any time of the day you want. Cheesecrackers, one per day. I can be more mindful of their eating habits the other nine months of the year in summer. You just need to not care as much. Another one of those rubber balls, cleaning. I think it is important that our homes feel comfortable and lived in, not museums and not nuclear waste sites. There's a middle ground. So there's some things that you just have to let go of control over. Um, how things are cleaned, how the dishwasher is loaded. Did my seven-year-old clean the family room the same way I would? Nope. But she vacuumed it better than not being vacuumed at all. So think about those rubber balls. And the glass balls, I'm guessing most of those are people related. They're the things that get on the calendar first. The sports physical that has to be done by August 1st, get it scheduled. Kids' birthday, plan it out. One thing that was non-negotiable for our family was a family game night. We called it forced family fun. And we tried to do a wide range of activities so that there wasn't just one kid that always hated it. But we purposely carved out time for relationship building because I want my kids to be friends with each other. Work responsibilities, well, that's what pays the bills. So it's a glass ball and it's got to get done. But if my kids know that there are designated fun times or family hours, they can generally understand designated work hours. However, I will say I did once have a kid interrupt a work meeting with a tuba solo. So, you know, sometimes you just have to embrace this stage of life. So, leaders, this is a season to rest from some things, but give yourself a break, but also give yourself and your family a lot of grace. And sometimes you just got to record this in the car with a beautiful background and a puppy dog jumping in the car.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Leaders, we know that your time is valuable. We're proud of you for investing in yourself by listening in today. We know that when you invest in mom, you change the world. We believe in you and we're caring for you.