Focus, Focus, Focus

Posted by Barbara | 0 comments

I don’t know about you, but there are moments in my day (and days in my week!) where I just feel frazzled, out of control, and clearly scatter-brained! (Can I get an amen?) What’s a gal to do to regain her focus? What’s a mom to do in order to help her kids regain their focus?

I read a brilliant book called Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard Foster. Actually I’ve read it several times now and each time I am drawn by his conversation on the simple complexity of prayer.

One of my favorite suggestions he makes is to select a “breath prayer” for yourself that you offer up many times a day. Something that is on your heart that can be said in one breath, so to speak. How often do I intend to pray “if only I had more time”. This gives me the ability to pray without ceasing on one matter that will greatly impact my day, and allow me to focus my heart and attentions. (Oh, I wish you would go and read the book. I’m making this sound an awful lot like a chore…he is much more inviting about this…)

So here is my breath prayer (it is actually more like two breaths worth, but close enough). It is Psalm 19:14.

”Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.”

There is never a time when I don’t need to keep that prayer on my lips. There is never a time when my speech is so pure and pleasing that I can stop worrying about being acceptable. There is never a time when the thoughts of my heart are so pure and focused that I can just stop guarding them. I will be saying this silently, under my breath, out loud with a cry, and hopefully with my children on many occasions today.

From Richard Foster’s book: “Commenting on breath prayers, Theophane the Recluse notes, ‘Thoughts continue to jostle in your head like mosquitoes. To stop this jostling you must bind the mind with one thought, or the thought of One only. An aid to this is a short prayer, which helps the mind to become simple and unified.” (pg. 130 Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home)

Along with this, I recently wrote a post on my blog about finding a motto or a mission statement for your family from the scriptures. I know many people often have a “life verse” or a passage that stirs their heart. Don’t let that passage and that stirring go to ‘waste’. Teach it to your children. Have it on your lips so often as a breath prayer or family motto that your family latches on to it and is changed by it. Having a verse posted on the fridge or on your school white board or posted on a plaque in your living room, and then remembering to actually take your children (and yourself!) to look at it, ponder it, work on it, live it out, is such a benefit and a help towards making your home become the haven and rest you wish it to be.

In the meantime, you really should find this book. It is such an “open window after a fresh rain” kind of feeling.

But what about your family? What would your life verse be? Do you have a school motto? A family motto? What could you use this week as a breath prayer? What other tools do you use to keep your focus personally, and as a family?

Barbara Postma and her husband, as they homeschool their 7 children, are finding out that no two children are alike! Between lessons and lunches, Barbara blogs at Fuel by Barbara.