Tuesday, June 5, 2012

2012 Family Goals: A Mid-Year Glance

Warning: no pictures with this post, just a LOT of thoughts!

I usually print out our Family Goals and post them somewhere in plain sight but since we were in a temporary apartment at the beginning of the year with a looming move into the new house, I just made the list and saved it to my desktop. Isn't it amazing how much more effective lists are when you can see them everyday?!! Since it is now June and we are half-way through the year (where does the time go???) I decided to take a peak and see how we have been doing!

We've had a few hits- I delivered Salem naturally!!! and we did have a garage sale to simplify. Everything else seems to be in the works still - paying off student loans, losing baby weight, and reducing grocery spending, among others. And some are still waiting for their time - starting a 4th of July annual celebration for our neighborhood and learning to can/preserve, for example. In other words, it's too soon to tell how we have been doing but we seem to be on the right track.

What was the most encouraging, however, was our Family Word for 2012 - intentional. Just one word at the bottom of the page that sounded good at the beginning of January. At this point, I don't think we could have picked a better word for our family for this year! Already, God has done some amazing works in our hearts. I thought the word would be a good fit since we were having a second child so we needed to be more intentional in the way that we spent our time with Colin and the new baby. However, being intentional has become a theme in other areas of our life too!

Reducing our grocery spending was one of our goals for this year, however, we have since decided that we want to be more intentional with the foods that we put in our fridge and on the table. We have become a little more 'aware' of the produce and foods that we buy so that our family can be healthy. Sometimes being healthy can be a little more expensive, so we are working on ways to balance that. In fact, we met with a couple from our church to discuss our finances and I actually used the word in our meeting! One of my goals was that I wanted to be more intentional with our resources! Chris and I have both been working to become more organized and responsible with our resources to better prepare our family for the future.

Chris and I have also been talking more and more about our family 'legacy', if you will. We've already looked into schools for Colin and have even talked about homeschooling as an option for him. God has really laid it upon our hearts to begin thinking about what environment we want our child to be educated in and how it may influence him, even on a spiritual level. Our pastor discussed parenting in this weekend sermon and said that from an early age it's important for us to have our children in the House of God and being involved in the works of God. Chris and I both serve in our church and attend consistently. We want them to grow up attending church and being involved in the church body. And, as we speak, our church is expanding. This could very well be the church of our kids and our kids' kids so this is the time for us to be intentional with our Sunday mornings/Wednesday evenings (and sometimes other day's in between) and being intentional in the way we raise our kids, in general.

While getting my hair done today I was reading through 'The Mission of Motherhood' (side note, I think that this is my third time reading through this book in full and each time I learn something new!) and this sentence caught my eye:

'God holds us accountable for our stewardship of his blessings' (pg. 49)

She, of course, was talking about our children as blessings in this sentence, but how perfect is that for every other area of our life? Our spiritual gifts, our resources, our children. All blessings that He has entrusted to us. It is SO very important to value these as blessings and to be responsible with them. And, more importantly, not to waste them!

PLEASE keep in mind, I am human and fail in all of the areas on a daily basis! I was just so encouraged the work that He has been doing in us and in our hearts. I'm excited to see what else He has in store for us this year as we seek to become more intentional with our blessings!

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