Having a schedule is incredibly important.  Without it I go nuts.  I walk aimlessly and lose my peace.  I waste time and am a lot less productive. 

Ever since the birth of my second daughter my schedule has been all wacked.  I don’t seem to have time for anything.  I wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep (rinse and repeat).  Days flow into months and I lose the sense of time.   This is a bad place to be in.  The worse part is that I didn’t even notice this until recently.  I realized that I completely lost the sense of sacredness of time. 

Before, my day was aligned with the liturgy of the Church.  I woke up, did my Morning Prayer, read the Office of Reading and was ready for work!  Work was opus dei, it had meaning.  Even when I was bored I knew that everything I do can be offered to God.  In the evening the Evening Prayer was a great way to thank God for all the good things that happened that day.  Finally at night a short examination of conscience summed up the day.  There is great order in the prayer of the Church.  I want to re-kindle that order in my life.

I don’t know how I gradually moved away from this regular pattern.  It started with missing the morning prayer from time to time.  At first I wasn’t too troubled since I did it for valid reasons (baby screaming for food is a valid reason!).  Soon I was missing it more and more.  I tried to justify it by listening to the prayer on the bus on my iPod but it is not the same.  This break with a routine soon transferred to the evening.  Tired from a full day of work and playing with my kids I skipped the evening prayers.  I’m amazed how fast bad habits grow.  Soon I didn’t even do my Office of Reading. 

I am glad that I’m starting to realize how much these things mean to me.  Without them I become lazy and I can feel a great disturbance in myself.  It is a lot easier to sin when I don’t think about God as often as I should.  Sin multiplies sin and I really think that I’m in a need of spiritual emergency room. 

I’m starting slowly to undo the damage I have done.  My spiritual muscles are weak and I find it difficult to pray.  I think it will be a while until I am back to my old routine but I hope that I will make it.   The first step is to go and clean my soul by good confession.  I need the “grace bath” to wash away the horrible filth that has accumulated in me over the last few months.