[A] Rule of Life is...about personal balance and loving relationships and intimacy with God. After a very intense first year or so, I began to notice a real improvement in my ability to meet the demands of my vocation. Things weren't so hard anymore. After two years, I realized that somewhere along the line, without my noticing it, I'd experienced a real calming of my person; I no longer had big ups or downs. I'd get up in the morning, and I'd be ready to start my day without any of the earlier reluctance or difficulty. My home was usually in satisfactory order, and the kids' schooling was coming along very well. That has continued until the present time, and it's coming on four years...
But most important, I've time for God and for my family. I can truly love them and attend to them. I know now that the most important things are the relationships God has placed in my life. I could say a whole new world has opened up for me, one that I had never discovered before, and I like it. Not that everything's perfect, but it's better. It's good.
And at the end:
God may well be asking you, in this era of marital and family decline, to make this conscious, wholehearted commitment to him and to your family as part of a renewal of the world. May God be with you.
Holly Pierlot in A Mother's Rule of Life
