The heroic minute/what I'm missing

Have you heard that phrase? The "heroic minute?" I'd always assumed it referred to when you wake up at a fixed time, pop right up out of bed and maybe throw on a kiss to the ground and the beautiful saying servium, "I will serve," for good measure. There is a whole lot of hero in that. And I've always loved the way it looks in my mind but I've never even come close to it in real life. But it's a truly beautiful way to start the day, right? Disciplined, grateful, selfless. I imagine starting that way would really help me to stay that way in the middle of life, and during lunch and naps and afternoon insanity and baths and bed. And even more- every time we practice a small discipline, we are beefing up for times we really need to just stop doing what we are doing. Feeling sorry for myself (stop), talking trash (stop), loosing my temper (stop), beating myself up over something (stop), wasting time (stop), the list can really go on and on forever amen. Conquering my first moment would surely strengthen my ability to conquer more moments. But, I've never done it. Not once. (Hi, cute baby gushy selfie!)



FOR INSTANCE, today I slept through my alarm for two full minutes before I opened my PBS kids app and handed my phone to Johnny. Then I fell back asleep for another full episode of something. **Realness**

Not that I don't imagine I could eventually acquire the skills required to have a heroic minute. I could. We all could. I just don't. I also don't go to bed early enough and I don't discipline myself in the many other ways that I would need to in order to be a heroic minute type of lady. And so I consider it a lofty, far away goal. And as soon as I hit snooze I immediately cross off "heroic minute" in my mind-list of things I'd like to accomplish that day and I don't even think about it again until the next morning when I'm hitting snooze.

But then I learned I had got it wrong.

The heroic minute does refer to your first action of the day, but it also can be any minute of the day. When you're sitting on the couch and you know you need to just get up and do the damn thing. Heroic. When you give yourself 5 minutes to check various social media outlets and click out of them right when the clock hits 5 even though you're in the middle of Adele Dazeeming yourself. Heroic. When you know you need to be somewhere in 20 minutes, and it takes you 20 minutes to get there, and you actually leave. Heroic. (Never being on time is another one of my specialties.)

I learned this and I was amazed. Because this goal is attainable. All the live long day, it's attainable. For me, for you, no matter what kind of day we are living. If the baby keeps you up a lot, and you need that extra 20/hour whatever, conquer that minute when you're fixing you're kids breakfast. Put down your phone and get those muffins in the oven (NOTE TO SELF.)

Because we all have a lot of vice and we are all looking for virtue. And for the mom, our lives are much harder to structure and discipline because, well, all these other people are (quite frankly) messing it up almost all the time.
Ex 1:


You see, I didn't necessarily plan on being in the hot tub fully clothed and shoed but I needed to leap in to save Clemmy from a potentially watery grave.

(Also, this is my dad showing off his back wound as he slipped into the hot tub a mere 3 min after my fully-clothed hot tub party started. This is me cracking up about what a hot mess of a family we are.)

///Back on track///
I don't want to be too intimidated to improve because I don't hop out of bed like a boss in the morning (yet.) I want to seize my minutes as often as I can. Slowly chipping away at who I am in order to be who I am becoming. You do it, too. Conquer a minute, be heroic. It's too easy to forget that it's really the little things.

Here's mine: I'm putting my phone down right now, getting dressed and moving my van because the street fixer guys are here and the sign is threatening to tow me. ✌

PS I did it.