Responsibility Chart.....

“You did it, awesome, job well done” are phrases that decorate the colorful circles next to the tasks completed for that day. A little piece of motivation for Macie and a way for Mommy and Daddy to stay organized is the reason behind the “Responsibility Chart” that now hangs in the kitchen.

Over the past few months Scott and I have talked on numerous occasions about setting into place a system for chores and allowance for Macie but we just never could come up with the right one. My sister got a “Responsibility Chart” for Christmas for her family and when I saw hers it sparked within me the motivation to try the same setup for our family. A little wooden chart I picked up at a nearby store has a plethora of chores and categories that fit magnetically on the chart and each day when those responsibilities are fulfilled you place a wooden token next to the task. Macie was super excited and could hardly wait to start it so we hung it proudly in the kitchen, picked out the responsibilities she would need to fulfill, and we were ready to go. Last night though as I was passing out wooden tokens for a great job done next to Monday’s list of tasks I felt a little guilty and convicted. I thought about this long list of responsibilities we are asking Macie to fulfill and honestly they are pretty simple and the chart is meant to remind her and help reward her efforts but what occurred to me is that there are areas in my own life even as an adult that I need to be reminded of daily.

As adults we don’t have “responsibility charts” hanging to remind us each day but isn’t that what accountability is meant to do? Part of accountability is that you don’t want to disappoint the other person; part of Macie’s chore chart is that she wants to complete each task everyday so we will be proud and she knows if she doesn’t get all of them completed we will be disappointed and she will be held accountable for that. In an effort to work on areas of my life and to help be a witness for Macie I decided I would add a category on the chart for myself and each day I would let Macie reward me with a token based on whether I complete my task for that day. The task I chose for myself is reading my Bible. 

Honestly I hate to admit it but there were more days than I would like to think where I didn’t read my Bible this past year and I didn’t give God the time He deserves each day. Life gets crazy and it’s easy to find ourselves running from activity to activity and getting caught up in everything else and God often gets pushed aside and our time with Him can be put on the back burner. I would like to say as the new year starts that I am going to complete my task every single day and will have a rainbow of colored wooden tokens next to my name for that task but I have to say that if it’s based on past habits there will be days I won’t complete it and those days will be devastating and I will be held accountable for that. I went back and forth on whether or not this would be a good idea considering my accountability partner is my 8 year old J But I came to the conclusion that I would go to great lengths in this life rather than disappoint my husband and my daughter and I want to teach Macie that I’m not perfect, I’m human and I have faults and imperfections. I want her to know that as an adult, as a mommy, as a wife and as a woman of Christ I have the “responsibility” to spend time in my Bible and to put forth effort each day working on my relationship with God. I want to show her that I need to be reminded and held accountable and that when I don’t do what I’m supposed to and I don’t read my Bible that it’s disappointing and has consequences. 

As 2014 approaches are there areas in your life that you need to be held accountable? Do you feel like you have a list of expectations for others around you but yet you find yourself falling short and not meeting those same expectations? I am a visual person and I love being organized so maybe the motivating factor of seeing the wooden chart hanging in the kitchen will be enough to help push me to be consistent in my tasks, regardless I am thankful for a God that knows my faults, that knows I have fallen short in the past and that I will fall short in the future but He still loves me anyway. 

“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me--the task of testifying to the good news of God's grace” Acts 20:24