Unscheduled Time

I want to be better at giving myself unscheduled time. I am not good at this. It is definitely not without effort. I can walk into a room and immediately start picking up and not notice the child in the room. Especially with another baby in our home my time is like gold! It can Seem like someone always needs something, and physical needs come first. Keeping clean clothes sounds so easy, doesn't it? But often it's the non-obvious needs that get second rank. The boy that wants you to fix his toy, mend his pillowcase, tape the book, re-paint his kendama because his is scratched. Moms are repair women. Our kids need us to be repair women. "Margin is important for de-stressing our days, but it’s also needed for our relationships. We can schedule time with the Lord and our families, but we also need UNSCHEDULED TIME to nurture those relationships. We can’t predict and schedule when people are going to NEED US or when the best time for conversations will be. We need margin." -Hearts at Home Ahhhh. We can't schedule when people are going to NEED US. When I quit my dream teaching job, my mentor shared a story with me of a time when she was doing carpool with another teacher. One morning she got into the car, disheveled and obviously crossed-eyed from dealing with her 14 year old daughter. (When more than one female has to get ready for something, in the same house? Good gracious, what happens??) Anyway she got her seatbelt on, and let out a sigh of relief. Before they pulled away, the older teacher turned to her and said, "Ya know, the best time to talk with your 14 year old daughter...........is when she's 14." Meaning, DON'T WAIT. The best time to deal with things that come up is RIGHT THEN and THERE. Ahhhh. You guys, isn't that so inconvenient?!!! It just interrupts my life, my thoughts (I am living proof that we cannot truly do more than one thing at a time.. and do it WELL). Kids are little interrupters. People are interrupters. And I don't like to be interrupted! Seems like the more I "schedule" and plan, more "unexpected" comes my way. When you schedule your day, is there room for the "unscheduled"? How flexible are you?