MONDAY

: the second day of the week

What constitutes a good day? I'm sure there are as many different answers to this as there are people who read these words. Today has been a great Monday - beautiful weather outside, blissful quiet in my home, much needed rest for my soul. What made today a good day? While I don't think I could ever pinpoint or perfectly replicate what made today a good day, I attribute part of it to my intentional approach to the day. Instead of letting my schedule dictate my day, I started my day - my work week - by taking care of me.

I have a little desk upstairs that makes a great haven. It overlooks our backyard and I sat there with the window open and enjoyed the quiet sounds of our neighborhood - hammering going on down the street, two boys and their father biking through the back alley, the muffled sounds of life being lived.

At this desk, I spent some time studying about patience (and asking myself some hard questions about how my judgment of others inhibits my patience with them), then wrote some before moving on to a project I've been working on for a few weeks now. This project is just for me, with no real or pressing purpose other than it engages my mind and lifts my spirits, but I decided that was a worthwhile use of my time on this Monday morning. After feeding my soul for a bit, I headed for the treadmill and was pleased to find that my leg held up for a twenty minute walk. That may not sound like much, but it's steady progress and it encouraged me. (It didn't hurt that my treadmill time was accompanied by the reading of a good book: nothing makes the minutes tick by like reading while walking.)

The rest of my day was spent largely doing "productive things" - laundry, dishes, grocery shopping and the like. But when I think back on this day, it's the quiet start to my Monday that centered my soul and allowed me to be productive without fatiguing mentally or physically. I can't start every day like this. In fact, this may be the only day this week where I have time to do all of these things in exactly this manner. So for the rest of the week, I'll just have to take the snippets of rest and restoration where they can be found - in a few moments of Bible study, reading a few pages of my book, crafting a collage for my journal or sipping my coffee from my haven.