Making Goals with Open Hands

It’s the new year and some people might be brave enough to make resolutions this year.

With everything going crazy in 2020, I know many people are more hesitant to make a list, plan, etc. And that’s certainly understandable! There were many things on my own calendar that were cancelled in the chaos of last year.

However, I don’t think all planning for 2021 needs to go up in smoke. Maybe we just need to think about it a different way. Go into the year with palms up, hands open, ready to change and modify.

I will say it again for those who missed it: I’m a planner!! Crossing things out of my agenda last March-July was hard. Especially since I love using fancy pens and markers {I would put the winking emoji here if I could}. Making plans just to have them cancelled, everything up in the air and unknown and uncontrollable was very difficult for me. And basically the entire year I was afraid to tell plans to my kids or write them with those fancy pens because they so often weren’t able to happen.

But the frustrations of 2020 will not keep me from thinking about and dreaming up goals for 2021. But I have a different mindset about the point of goals and the benefit of making them.

As I’m thinking through goals for this year and waiting with anticipation and trepidation for what it holds, here’s the process I’m following.

• Prayer. Before I write anything I want to do/accomplish, I ask God to convict me of areas I need to grow in, bring what he wills in my path, and help me seek humility above all else. This isn’t MY year. This isn’t MY life. It’s God’s, and I want to be right where he would have me.

• Write. This can be a list of things to accomplish in different categories (spiritual, health, family, bucket list, etc.), it can be a long journal entry of what I’m praying for this year, it can be a diagram of what to do/when/how. The main thing is I get it on paper! Then I decide what I can realistically do in a year with my current life (family, church, homeschooling, working, housework…).

• Talk. Tommy and I chat about projects we can tackle together, trips we want to make, things we would like to do. I also ask the kids. Usually their suggestions are a little unrealistic (visit Norway and Sweden, recreate dinosaur DNA, build an American Girl room in our house….) but they also request things like camping trips, playdates, sleepovers with Grammy or Nana. Family and memories are so important to me and I want to make room for those too!

I know goal planning isn’t for everyone. I’m not super strict with myself but I do like to sit and think and consider how God would have me use my abilities and time and energy throughout the year. Of course, those things can all change. Maybe we’ll be given extra time {think quarantine} or maybe we’ll walk through a trial with illness or family and not get anything from our list marked off.

For me, it’s not just about the end goal or accomplishing my list — although I love checking things off lists! It’s also about how God grows me and the things I learn through the events of the year. I certainly learned patience and trust, waiting for God’s time and will, and my need for rest and fellowship in 2020. None of those were things on MY to-do for last year but Gods knows best.

Going into 2021, I’m praying, writing, and talking about goals and desires and dreams. But I’m holding them in open, out stretched hands and I might start using a pencil.

Photo by Hayley Maxwell on Unsplash

A Word for the Year

In the last few years, it has gotten popular to choose a word to ‘live out’ for the year. Depending on what your focus is, the word can be anything from kindness to confidence.

I don’t always pick a word but I do find it helpful to give some intentional thought to what I want to focus on for the year. And I usually try to study what the Bible says about that word or brainstorm ways I can put it into practice. I’ll get to my word for 2020 in a minute. But first, let’s talk about my process for choosing a word and my purpose in doing it.

When I start to think in December about a possible word for the next year, I think a lot about what my struggles that year have been. Is there something I need to pull away from, learn more about, focus on? Do I know of hardships, challenges, changes coming in the New Year that I need to prepare for? {I realize the next year is largely an unknown time but sometimes we know a surgery is coming, a move might happen, struggles from the previous year that carry over…} I start to pray and think about where God would have me focus my time and energy.

I already mentioned the benefit of focusing my study and learning about a single word. When I chose humility, I was blown away by all the things the Bible has to say — both positively about being humble and negatively on being proud. I started a running list of verses and examples of pride vs humility. I also noticed in my own life that a lot of things I struggled with looped back to being proud; either how well I did something, not asking for help, having a superior attitude. The root of it all was pride. It made the humility of Christ stand out even more in my mind.

Last year, my son was learning the Fruit of the Spirit in our church kids program and we talked A LOT about how we live out each of those nine words. So for 2019, I decided it would be good for me to dwell on them, study them, memorize them too so as I talked with my son, I would be practicing myself what I was telling him to do.

For 2020, I chose the word Ask. One thing that kept coming back to me at the end of last year was my struggle to admit when I needed something. And not just physical help from those around me but asking things of God — for wisdom, peace, everyday needs. My desire to control situations and be seen as a strong, self-sufficient person meant I wasn’t doing a basic thing — praying — and I was getting discouraged by all the things I couldn’t do. {Remember when I mentioned earlier a lot of issues boil down to pride? Clear example here!} The more I thought about it, the more I realized I needed to dwell on the importance of asking. And once I started looking for verses that talk about what we should ask for, why it’s important to ask, etc, I was completely convinced this needed to be my word!!

Do you choose a word or a verse to think about throughout the year?

Photo by Skyla Design on Unsplash

Happy New Year!!

2019. It doesn’t seem possible yet here we are, at the start of another year.

2018 was filled with…lots of different things. Good, bad, hard, memorable, victories, laughter, tears. We had a baby, we moved, my grandma died, my parents moved, we started another homeschool year, I lost sleep. It’s hard to imagine how 12 months - 365 days - could hold so much. But here we are, on the threshold of doing it all again. Facing the unknown and trusting God to see us through.

Last year my focus was on quieting my heart. Not getting so caught up in what happened that I forgot to take time for God’s Word and peace. For this year, I didn’t choose a word to dwell on but rather a group of words. Over the last several months, the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) has come up in many conversations with my kids and members of our church. Those nine words seem so simple yet put into daily practice become so difficult. So for 2019 I’m thinking, repeating, dwelling, and focusing on those: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Look for future posts about what I’m learning and how I’m applying them to my life.

For Christmas I received from my sister a journaling Psalter. It is a book with just the Psalms but every other page is blank for notes, thoughts, doodles. Then one of my sisters in law gave me a book about the Psalms and the themes of each one. So expect to see some blog posts about what I’m learning as I read through Psalms this year.

For my daily Bible reading, I’m using my She Reads Truth Bible again and the reading plan that’s in the back of it. This version {Christian Standard} I’ve probably read/heard the least so I decided to read it again. The plan I’m using is two Old Testament and two New Testament chapters each day. It goes through Psalms and the New Testament twice in the year.

I have some goals and projects I’m working on but I’ll save those for another post. Happy January 1! Let’s use this year to serve others, glorify God, and draw closer to our Lord.

Photo by Wout Vanacker on Unsplash