Mondays are re-set days, days to plan the week (unless that’s a Sunday evening activity for you). Monday’s are days to plan for what’s left of the month, or to make a blueprint for the rest of your life. It’s blue-sky Monday, not “blue-Monday”, a term I’ve thankfully not heard in years. 

Before you get to planning try to take care of some foundational issues. 

Clear your head and heart of lingering resentments or unforgiveness — plans made on top of foundations of bitterness are sure to backfire and be costly to much more your wallet.

Make right with people in your immediate and extended family — plans made while in conflict or dissention are likely to crash into barriers of invisible loyalties and burn you up on the inside. 

Relax and breath deeply before you begin your planning — futures  developed in anxiety and desperation will hardly lead to a peaceful future, be it for the week or forever.

Plan your way out of debt, first — nothing will be a more perfect barrier to achieving your hopes and dreams than trying to pay off maxed out credit cards. 

Be assured that your plans may indeed not come to full and planned fruition but if no plan exists, and you plan nothing, you’re most certainly sure to achieve it.

When you are feeling overwhelmed, crowded out by responsibilities, sad, and yet motivated, and bombarded with “monkey’s weddings” (explanation to come), there are a few things you can do. I make lists of all I have to do. If you see me making pencil columns on paper listing all I have to do you know I am getting close to desperate.

But, let me get a “monkey’s wedding.” 

Perhaps I have taken the metaphor to unintended depth but when a South African uses the term “monkey’s wedding” it means it’s raining and the sun is shining. Something very beautiful is occurring when it is also inextricably linked to something sad. 

A young child read Psalm 23 yesterday to hundreds of people. 

It was perhaps the most beautiful reading I have ever heard of that psalm. 

The boy needed no help or prompting and the child – about 7 or 8 years old – displayed no sign of nervousness as his dad stood behind him at the pulpit. 

The child was reading the psalm at his beloved grandmother’s funeral. 

A perfect “monkey’s wedding.” 

I am driving my son to New York City this weekend where he will settle into his new and wonderful life.

Please use the term in your own life if you are hearing it now for the first time.