We plan to arrive 5-15 minutes before our church service begins every Sunday. "Why" was last week; this week I'll explore how we do it, even with preschoolers..
The first rule is to be realistic. We've tried to adjust our schedule to sleep in later but it never works and never will work if we're not being honest with our timetable. For instance, it takes 15 minutes to drive to our church; we'll never arrive when we want to if we only allow 10 minutes to get there.
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The Mass we normally attend begins at 9:00. Our goal is to arrive at the church between 8:45 and 8:50. We use the earlier time to give ourselves flexibility for things to go wrong. Since it takes 15 minutes to drive there, we try to leave our house by 8:30.
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5-10 minutes are needed for children and husband to brush their teeth and me to clear the breakfast table (I brushed mine earlier). Breakfast itself takes about 20 minutes. So we allow a 1/2 hour and try to sit down by 8:00.
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We need 20-30 minutes for husband to shower, everyone to get dressed, and breakfast to be set on the table. If we use too much time then those who want to eat a banana might have to be satisfied with just their cereal. Based on this, we wake up the girls by 7:30 if they're not already up.
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Husband and I schedule about an hour every day to pray on our own. Practically speaking, on Sundays this is from about 6:20-7:20. The 10 minutes between our personal prayer times and dressing is our flex time, spent on finishing up a Bible study or setting out breakfast or stretching out or picking up things that were left out the night before.
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It takes about 20 minutes from the time our alarm goes off to get to the prayer room. We pray with each other, I brush my teeth, use the restroom; just waking up takes me a few minutes. If either of us drank coffee, I'm certain this is when it would be brewed. This is the portion of our schedule that we really have to be realistic about. We could say it shouldn't take us more than 5-10 minutes, but the reality is that it takes closer to 20. So we wake up on Sundays at 6am to allow the 20 minutes it actually takes.
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When do you arrive at your church each Sunday? When do you want to arrive? If your answer's not the same for both those questions, what would you need to change to fix it?
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Linked with Works for Me Wednesday and Simple Lives Thursday and Modest Monday
Our church service starts at 10:30. Church is almost a mile from our house, but my 7-year-old can walk it in 15 minutes without "hurrying." He likes to climb on a certain wall and a certain railing along the way, and I allow him to do this if it's not going to make us late. So our plan is to leave the house at 10:00, and the actual reality is that we usually leave between 10:05 and 10:15.
ReplyDeleteFor a few years, we were often running late for church and would end up deciding to take the car--which doesn't always save time since we have to go a longer way due to one-way streets, and we may have trouble finding parking if we are really cutting it close. My new year's resolution was to quit driving to church except when I actually planned to--when we're bringing something heavy, we're going straight from church to someplace we have to drive, or it's raining. I asked God to help, and I'm sure that's the reason it has seemed "easy" to get our act together!
It also helps a lot to have an area (ours is an extra chair in a corner of the dining room) where we put things that we are going to take to church: food pantry donations, items borrowed from friends, etc. That way we don't waste time rounding them up at the last minute. My son was sometimes making us late by deciding which stuffed animal would get to come to church this day; now, the rule is that any animal who wants to come must get on the chair by breakfast time. After breakfast, before I get dressed, I put the things that are going to church into a bag and hang it with my purse, and if I see too many animals there I tell my son to decide which one is on its best behavior; that gives him plenty of time. He enjoys instructing his animals in what to do in church. :-)