October happened

I have been thinking about rearranging my gardens. Drawing little maps of my gardens and thinking, move a to b and b to c and on and on. In theory this seems like a great plan, but it will be a ton of work to actually do. Just saying that reminds me to go "one plant at a time" "one garden at a time".
We are coming into a very busy holiday season. We still need to carve pumpkins for this weekend.
Here is what is true for me today. I can't seem to get it all done. All the things that make up "all". Here I feel like I just got started on this and my husband is saying "put that away, lets go to bed." It's the end of another day and if I didn't at least write this, I wouldn't have written anything for the whole month. I feel sad about that.
Now that I've lamented over October, I was part of a conversation today regarding "busyness". We were discussing chaos in our days and when we struggle. As it turns out our struggles had a common theme, timeliness. Getting the kids off to school, out the door, making dinner or getting discount tickets for the theme park at the expense of an hour. These troubling experiences troubled us because we were up against time. Why are we on the clock? What can we do to about it? If we weren't always up against the clock, would these particular moments in our day be easier to deal with? None of us would know because we are all so busy living life and doing..... the things that need to get done. Then we concluded all these "things" are good but the devil perverts them. So here is the definition of perverts according to Webster's. Pervert: 1) to cause to turn from what is considered right, good, or true, misdirect; lead astray, corrupt 2) turn to to an improper use; misuse 3) to change or misapply the meaning of; misinterpret; distort; twist 4) to bring into a worse condition; debase. This is were I pause, did I agree with the concluding statement because I find it to be true or because it's easier to blame the devil than make unpopular choices different than the norm? My chaotic time of day is making dinner. Given the exercise of imaging how the scenario would be different with Jesus in the room, I think Jesus would tell me to stop as he did Martha, so I would stop and pick up my crying baby, holding and comforting her until she was bored and I had to make dinner, even if it means eating 15 minutes later. I tried that tonight, and it was successful. Planning was a solution offered by the group. Don't we just plan and plan and plan. Plan what we are wearing the next day, plan what the meals will be for the week, plan our holidays, weekends, daily routines, vacations, weddings, Dr appointments, getting homework done and the morning routines, the athletic schedules, which church service to attend, re-arranging the garden the list goes on ad infinitum. Are we trying to do too much, has the devil perverted these good things, or have we? I hope I'm willing to stop and pick up my daughter again tomorrow when she is crying at my feet as I make dinner, what ever that will be.