I have been thinking a lot lately about the importance of priorities, especially about understanding what my own priorities really are.

The defining of what my priorities should be  is very simple:  My relationship to God and my vocation as wife and mother.   In the basic  my faith, my marriage, my children, and my home.  Anything that negatively affects those things is, in the long run, detrimental to my happiness in this world and the next.

I have been reading 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller.  It is a good read with some terrific insight into the differences between vocation, career and job and it is a good and useful book especially for someone who is in need of a career change, but who doesn’t know how to break out of the rut they are in with their current career.  Mr Miller spends some time talking about seven areas of your life: Career, financial, social, family, physical, personal development, and spiritual, and the need for success and balance in all these areas.  I could easily quibble about that – religious life being an example where these priorities are very different, yet religious life is  rich and satisfying  for those who embrace it.  But it was interesting to me that I was reading about priorities – I think God answers many of my prayers with little bumps.   If I am praying for direction one thing will be repeating over and over — in conversations with friends, things I am reading, things I find online, news stories, random and seemingly disconnected and after about 20 little hints I see the pattern.

We went through a lot in 2009.  I need to set aside some time to ponder my priorities and get myself focused on the most important aspects of my life.