Beginning with a schedule

My plans and expectations were so disrupted recently that I couldn't even remember what normal was supposed to look like. For about a month we had children waking up for a couple hours each night, children coming down with the flu, with strep throat, with whoknowsexactlywhat virus, and children sharing their sickness with me. :( I didn't get up at my normal hour, I was kept busy caring for sick children and their laundry, I didn't have the same alertness I would have after a normal, restive night of sleep. The kids watched tv, we skipped schoolwork, our meals were simple and less healthy and less substantial than normal...when we gathered together for a meal at all. As appetites returned and normalcy became a possibility again, I needed to pick up the broken bits of our schedule and put them back in the correct order. But what belongs in our schedule? Time to watch tv? Personal quiet prayers? Exercise? And when is each supposed to happen anyway?
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There is a fine balance between cheerfully letting the Lord rearrange my plans and "planning to fail by failing to plan". I need to have a baseline to work with even though I need to have a good attitude when my plan falls down around me. So, I printed a basic weekly schedule, wrote in first the items which are most consistent (meal times, mostly), then filled in the remaining hours from the most common to the most vague (four hours each day to "clean/cook/laundry" can mean a lot of different things). I kept it as realistic as possible rather than as efficient as I might dream it could become. There's not much time left for some very important pieces, which is why I was struggling to make them happen. Hmm... Well, that didn't surprise me! Yet, just filling in the schedule form gave me inspiration for tweaking some areas, including some more reading time for the kids, to their great excitement.
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I can see that some small steps need to be attached to big areas but I need to make sure they aren't taking over the big areas altogether. For instance, during my time to shower and dress, if I spend a couple minutes cleaning up the bathroom but I make sure that I do not add any other little chores to that time slot than I will have a cleaner bathroom without spending 15 minutes later in my day to come back and clean it. I'm there already; the supplies are there already; no toddlers are there yet to interrupt; but I really don't have time to spruce up the bathroom and the bedroom and the closet and put away that load of folded laundry. Those little chores are not visible on my schedule. Nor are the little interruptions such as bumped knees and baby cuddles. I could look at this outline and become depressed at how little I am actually doing or I can realize how general it truly is and accept that I could never fit all the little items on one sheet, no matter how tiny I wrote my letters. I try to give myself credit for the many things I do which will never be visible on a piece of paper especially on the days which end with a messier house and a frustrating review of an uncompleted to-do list.
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I cannot foresee which days will be turned off-kilter with no private time left for quiet prayer but I can make choices which allow me to spend time with the Lord despite a disrupted schedule. Redundancy helps: a habit of listening to the Bible in audio form while I am getting dressed, a semi-regular pattern of memorizing verses as a family at mealtimes, family devotional read every morning at breakfast, Bibles on my phone and my Kindle and my desktop, and subscriptions to motivating Christian podcasts and blogs help me keep God's Word in my life even when I don't read it right after waking up or find my reading thoroughly interrupted by my children. Consciously choosing for the Lord also helps: I don't know when I'm wakened in the middle of the night whether that interruption will be a one-time event or whether it will end up keeping me up for 3 hours and derailing my morning plans. But I do know that if I choose during that first time to read Scripture and/or a good devotional then I can reduce the damage done to my relationship with the Lord even if I sleep in the next morning. I have a choice; I can choose to spend that time with God rather than with the tempting novel or facebook or other media distraction. The result might not produce the same type of prayer life as I would have if I were a cloistered nun. But then again, God didn't call me to be a cloistered nun, He called me to this life, complete with all its interruptions. He must therefore want me to seek out ways to maintain and build my relationship with Him while embracing the interruptions.
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My schedule will never be perfect. It will never go entirely according to plan. But ocassionally reviewing what it's "supposed to" look like helps me realign my priorities despite the disruptions.