Site Meter Good Things Women's Ministry: April 2010
Taken from Titus 2, here is the chance to learn from today's women about "good things",
covering topics from how to handle conflict to showing how to cut up a fresh chicken.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Session 3 - Lesson, Priorities and Time Management

Joan made the perfect transition from the ironing demonstration by telling us how she copes with her ironing and her tread mill obligations.

Joan is a retired school teacher, has two grown sons and a few grandchildren. My son Grant says of her that she is the most organized person she knows. If they go on a vacation, she probably has everything planned down to what they should do during their layover at an airport. She also taught sunday school for about 20 years, is notorious for throwing good parties and has the world's best board game collection.

Therefore, we were honored her hear from this friendly person and familiar face what her secrets were to time management and setting priorities.

After she set up a TV-tray for a stand and set a box-like podium on it, she started with the definitions of these terms. We could suddenly imagine ourselves as students in a classroom as soon as she stepped behind the make-shift podium. Priorities were doing things in an order of importance. She distinquished between things that have immediate need, but weren't necessarily important.

Some priorities are born in us - given by God, Joan taught. Desire for food, desire for campanion and sex. She used references from Gen 1:28, 2:24, 3:8 and I Cor 1:9. Clearly, God made the first couple with desires of basic needs and therefore, we have some inborn priorities for these things. Joan shared how Adam and Eve sought God's friendship, even after they sinned in the garden. We also see the fellowship that Jesus established with the disciples and how he spend personal time with them and set aside time to do that because it was a priority.

We also have a natural desire for authority and powe, as displayed in Luke 10:19-20. After all, God gave mankind the authority to rule the earth and gave us the mental capacity to accomplish it.

Joan broke out the general description of priorities into four major categories.

Spiritual Life: We should set aside a time and place for a personal with God, ideally, daily. Not everyone is a morning person, so don't let yourself get hung-up on having to do devotions in the morning. Joan shared her struggle to try to get up early, before her school-day started. But she found the time to be distracted with thoughts of how much had to get done that day. So, she learned that the time between when school was over and before she went home to start the family's evening activities, she had a quiet spot in the day. It was a lull between activities where she could make some time for quiet. She emphasized that if we don't plan for a quiet moment, it won't happen. So, think through your day and settle on a time that will work for you.

Joan also gave the example of how she walks for exercise and that when the Walk-man tape player devices came out, she used that to listen to sermons or the Bible on tape. Today's technology allows this to be even more convenient. She suggested, however, that if you walk and pray, make sure you keep your eyes open.

She wanted to make sure we had a proper understanding of who we were worshipping when we pray and spend this time of devotion to God. She said, "Don't put God on the list of emergency numbers" as if he was someone to call on when a fire was raging. "He's not a 911, He deserves more than that." Yes, he is the almighty and there is nothing he cannot do, so give him the worship he rightly deserves.

Personal Health/Careers: Joan reminded us of six things that will help maintain our health and which in turn will help keep each type of career, home or office, on track. 1) Get proper sleep. This is good advice, especially for a woman who is multi-tasking. Prioritize for yourself that you get enough sleep for your daily activities. It's OK. Leave the dishes and go to bed earlier than usual one night. Give yourself this gift because if you are dragging, it will affect all the people around you. 2) Get regular exercise. If you are healthy and your body is working at its fully potential, you will be more flexible when surprises happen. 3) Eat healthy meals. It's become more popular lately to make home-made meals, but it takes time and planning. Joan shared how her best friend while raising kids was the crock pot. 4) Get outside. Part of being healthy is being in the sunlight. Joan found that it helped to take a break just get away, even for a few minutes, even in the cold winter. 5) Relax. The world won't end if you don't have the dust off your door jams. Joan shared a story told by her mother-in-law. If you have people coming over unexpectedly, clean the four corners of the room and that's what people notice because they are usually positioned in the middle of the room when they visit. That's a real "ah ha" since we have to find some short-cuts when the unexpected happens. 6) Stop whining. Stay away from complaining and other people who complain.

Finances: Some old-time Christians used to think that being "holy" meant that you had to be dirt poor. That's not scriptural. In fact, we know that it's the love of money that is the root of evil, not the money itself. Matt 6:21 is an excellent verse to remember about what our heart tells us about money.

Here's Joan's example of of how to prioritize finances: God's Share: God deserves more than tip money. Many people spend more money on entertainment each week than to God.

Saving: Sacrifice some of your weekly spending and put it away for savings. Even if it is a dollar, it is still saving what you can. This way, when you need some extra money, you will have it. Joan recommended that it is a better idea to use your savings rather than buy things on a credit card. I suppose there may be different opionions on that, but non-the-less, it is good advice at the right moment.

When kids, Joan's parents would required of their family to sacrifice for a certain cause in order to teach their children the meaning of giving. So when it came to be Christmas time, the children received very little and were reminded that they sacrificed these things for others. Unfortunatly, as Joan explained, this was not a savings account and in the end, it turned her brothers away from generously giving to others.

Joan listed her priorities of what to spend money on. A . Pay for just the needs, pay for the basic requirments of living first. This inlcudes your house, your food, and your car. B. If you have money left after the needs, God's share and savings, then you may get the things you "want", but don't really need. Joan's rule-of-thumb is: Do I want it bad enough to have to dust it? C. After these things, and you still have money left, that's the time you may want to consider a frivolous thing, like a gift for your spouse or even yourself.

Family/Home Life Spend enough adequate time with your family. Do things at home and make sure your schedule includes the time to manage your home responsiblities. Don't be afraid to give your children assignments and house chores to do. This teaches them responsibility, how to work within a deadline and be work as a team.

Be willing to learn from others and how they handled the home life stress. Joan tells how she learned from Marjory how it was important to be cheerful and happy when you and your family meet for an evening meal to give each other that extra breathing space before talking about the bad things that happened that day.

Another piece of advice that Joan took was from a church leader, Wayne, who siad that when your children are growing up, look for a family in the church who has children of good behavior and talk to those parents. Look for a family that you respect, get to know them and find out what they did.

The family and home life has to be organzied and all members of the family take part in that to make it happen.

Session 3 - Demo, Ironing and Starching

Edwina dragged her ironing board up the sidewalk to the house. She seemed to be handling it all ok, her purse and bag with the iron on one arm and her other arm seemingly buckled around the long board. If she was stepping on a boardwalk rather than a sidewalk, you'd think she was about to go surf-boarding the way she walked with purpose and excitement.

Edwina is about 80, (really, who has a name like Edwina and is not that old?), is about 5'3" and always always wears a snappy outfit with jewelery and earrings or the "the most" scarf. Her grey hair is nicely fixed because she goes to the "beauty parlor" every week. She is always put together.

She came within about three feet of the stoop to my house, all smiling and cheerful to be one of our speakers of the day, and wouldn't you know it, that gosh-dern ironing board decided to open. She was one minute gripping the board and then the next moment the board was standing on one set of legs with the other set flying straight in the air. If that ironing board was female, which I strongly believe all ironing boards are, that is hardly a stance I would choose for its propriety.

Thankfully, the two women behind her helped her out and got the now discombobulated contraption into the house. Edwina, also accustomed to irregularities in her snappy world, came in laughing with the rest of us.

We set up and gathered the women, already gabbing and giggling, around the dining table where I had also set up a portable ironing board on the table. I had a sample men's dress shirt from the dry cleaners, perfectly starched and pressed, to compare our work to this morning. Also on hand were two wrinkled, but clean, shirts. Aggie was the volunteer to try it as Edwina taught it.

Edwina is a widow but was married to a preacher and raised several children in her four-score-plus years of life. She always felt the need to look her best and to make sure her family did too. She has pulled wrinkles out of more tough surfaces that a Hollywood dermatologist would be totally jealous of her skills.

She showed us the most obvious places of the shirt that need closer attention; the collar, buttons and facing, cufffs and shoulders. She used the end of the ironing board, which suddenly decided to be her friend, to press the shape of the shirt into the shoulders. She did this by pulling the neck and collar over the narrow end of the board first and just enough to slide a bit of the sleeve onto the end. It made a smooth fit and Edwina could iron easily without getting any fabric caught in a fold and accidently pressing a nice crease into the front. I have done this several times to my own annoyance. Aggie did a splendid job of following the instructions Edwina gave. Aggie demonstrated how to make the neck line area stand tall by pressing the iron between the top button and the collar and then giving the collar a little tug. That's a neat little trick.


She also used the back, square part, of the board and fit it between the sleeves as she ironed the back of the shirt. How about that . . . it looked like the other end of the board was just made for such a purpose.

She described how irons have a layered groove at the pointed tip of the iron so that it can iron around buttons. Several women exclaimed, "oh, I didn't know that", and moved up closer to see what they had apparently missed all their lives. Edwina demonstrated that as she ironed around buttons, the grooved worked to lift the button out of the way so that that tip of the iron could press the fabric underneath. That was a cool (or rather "hot") finding.

She told stories, as women are likely to do while working on a routine task, as she worked. She remembered heating an iron iron (as opposed to a stainless steel iron) on the stove to get it hot enough to press out their clothes.

She also remembered the days when they used borax powdered starch. They would mix the dry starch in a bowl of water and then dip just the collar, border and cuffs into the mixure. We wondered how they did that without getting the rest of the shirt wet. So, of course, she demonstrated. We watched as she first folded the cuffs back and forth in about 1 inch folds, accordian style and held that bunch in her one hand. She then gathered the collar and folded it back and forth the same way and held that in her one hand too, with the blousie parts of the shirt hanging down. Finally, she zig-zag folded the button border up the same way and held what looked like a fabric flower bud waiting to explode. She said that after they folded up the parts that needed to be starched, they just dunked them in the water and starch mixture and put it in the refrigerator.

Ok, I was really following the whole thing until the refrigerator part. I started thinking, 'that's what I get for asking an elderly woman to do a demonstration'. But, I was wrong because after several astonished looks and a gasp, Edwina explained. In those days, you would mix up your starch and dip the shirt sections all at one time rather than do the mix each day. Usually, there were too many shirts to iron all at one time, especially when you did laundry once a week, so, to keep the borax starch from going bad, they kept the whole thing fresh in the fridge. Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle. The things women spent their time on.

Today of course, we have spray starch to use. And, we probably don't have so many items to iron that we have to save some in the fridge. Aggie said that when she starches, she starches the inside of the garment, rather than the outside, so that the iron's surface doesn't get sticky. That's a good idea.

She also said they ironed the sheets and underwear. I think it was Annette who asked why they did that because she had heard that and had always wondered. Clearly, the sheets weren't made out of the fine threaded fabric we have today. They were rough milled cotton and the thread count was probably less than 100 per square inch. So when they slept on the sheet, it was rough on their skin and chaffed. If they ironed the sheets, they would be smoother and easier to sleep on. The same was true of the underwear they wore. Today's nicest sheets are 600 threads per square inch, which means there's little possibility of actually feeling the threads on your skin. Of course, we have different sources of thread than raw cotton to use today also. I can't imagine all that time spent just ironing to make your family more comfortable. No wonder my Irish female ancestors took in ironing for extra pay. Now it makes sense.

We had a fun time chatting about our own experiences of ironing. One woman said that when she doesn't feel like she has accomplished anything, she will iron. She said that everytime she pressed out a wrinkle, she told herself, 'see there, I've fixed a problem today'. Who knew that ironing could be an uplifting experience. I never thought of that. Several stories of finger burns and of the career woman in a hurry to iron a smudge of wrinkles out of her skirts while wearing it.

We also had a few remedies for getting out scorch marks. Since these are really slight burns on the fabric, and if not too deep, they may be scrubbed with an steel-wool pad. If you damage the fabric with the steel-wool, I guess you just need to admit defeat and throw the thing out.

Joan said she just throws her ironing on top of her tread mill so she has an excuse to not do either. With that, we finished the demonstration in smiles.