“It’s a brand new day and the sun is high!” – Name That Film?
Happy 2018 everyone! IS anyone else just so relieved 2017 is over? Actually 2017 tried to hang on into the new year at our house, but we officially squashed it and started the year over again on the 8th!
Anyway for the past three years I have been praying for a word to center myself around. Something to anchor me to God and his plans for me. I use that time between Christmas and the new year to decompressing and sit still. Most years I get started and the word just comes straight at me, no searching, it just falls into my path.
This year was not that easy. I opened my Bible as much as possible, I searched all the faith hashtags, I even checked the verse of the day…every day. It was already Jan and I didn’t have clarity at all. I finally did the right thing, I stopped trying to hard. I prayed for it to come in the right time and set it aside.
With most things this tactic is meant to create space for the thing we want to “just happen” while in reality it isn’t happening for a variety of reasons. Usually letting go does not make something happen right away. But it this case it did! The very next lesson at church covered this verse and I was shocked and then felt foolish for doubting God’s provision.
There is so much to learn from taking a step back and feeling that connection. I pray this year restores order, peace, confidence, and love.
To say I was overjoyed at this year’s word would be cheesy and true. I try to really let God give me my word every year. This year I hadn’t had time to give it much focus and I was worried when I first sat down that it might be brave. (Man I did not want that one, but I knew it was possible.) Thankfully I was led to Zephaniah 3:17.
The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. ESV
Again a word that follows the re- format. I love how that works out. It feels like these three years will fit together as a time in my life that I had to re-view or re-learn my lessons from God. At the beginning, in 2015, God started this stage of my life and spiritual journey with Remain. I had so much desire to totally change and run to the end…skip the work and enjoy the “new me.” God knew I needed the reminder to wait and let Him refine me in His own time. Little did I know that remain would be even more appropriate as we waited to bring “Bo” home. Those long weeks were full of remaining and God was so good to us in that time.
This past year was more about endurance, and God was very clear in giving me Return as my word to hold on to. I took my troubles and worries on myself, and then returned them to Him over and over again. But it got easier and became more fluid as I learned slowly how to hold things with an open hand. I still have so much growing to do in that area, but 2016 was a good start.
And so we have come to 2017. I feel so blessed to have survived the wild ride of the last 13 months. God has continually guided me and confirmed his promises as we pray for the future.
In the good times and the bad I will aim to Rejoice in Him.
This calendar shift has been a struggle for me. My world totally changed about three weeks before the new year, so I was a little underwhelmed by 2016 beginning.
However, I have been thinking about one important aspect of this time of renewal.
Last spring a dear friend gave me the idea to ask God for a word for the year. (You can read about it here.)
For me this word is about grounding myself when I get lost in my head, stuck in that “what can I do about it” mindset. There are so many ways to work toward a better relationship with God that I sometimes forget the main point…which is God himself. (All of those things are AMAZING tools, just saying.) I find that for me I get caught up it what I have to do, and I forget that I need only ask God to allow these tools to change me, to draw me nearer to him.
And so for the second year I have asked God to give me a word to focus in on when I get distracted, or when I feel weak. At first I felt drawn toward Obedience (bleh!), but I was praying God would give me a less harsh version. Turns out I had to remain a little instead of Google-ing synonymous.
Today I found some screen backgrounds in a Bible reading app I’ve had for a few months. (Sidebar – check out She Reads Truth sometime.) One of them had a verse from Joel that clearly was my answer:
Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, – Joel 2:13 partial ESV
And there it is : Return
I so often lately am worried about all the ways I could mess up. All the things I could lose if I make a wrong move. But that is not how this works. God’s will is going to happen. I am not responsible for it. I will play a part, but if I should choose not to or my time in that situation changes, it is not going to mess up His plan.
There is such freedom in this. In returning to Him and asking to be a part of his good work.
Sometimes what you want to say comes out in pieces. I have wanted to share this for weeks, but I haven’t been satisfied with the results. However my desire to share has outweighed my tendency to be very critical of myself. So here goes…
Earlier this year I followed a friend’s lead and went in search of a word for the year. The idea being that this word would give me focus. I haven’t been as intentional as I would like spiritually, and when I found myself more aware and concerned about this I knew I needed something, something simple to anchor myself to.
At first one word was hard to come by, so this verse became my starting point:
Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” -John 13:7 NIV
This settled easily into my thoughts as I tried to keep my worrying spirit at rest. But I was still on the lookout.
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It’s time for my first update. As is customary my initial effort for #In90Days is lacking. If your new to this challenge you can learn more here. Luckily I knew this going in. When we try to overhaul our life I think the biggest struggle is making sense of our high goals and moderate expectations. You can’t just focus on the ideal perfect outcome anymore than you can stare at the pretty likely low success rate. You must charge ahead toward the ideal, while keeping in mind that it will take time to build up speed. Even though I thought all of this through when I started, I still stumbled along when it didn’t talk off very well.
First let me tell you how I did.
Get Up Early – 5/14
This is my worst one. There are several things that compounded making this a pain point, but I am giving myself grace. I am a night owl by nature, and my son takes his sweet time going to sleep. I think there are many reasons this is a particularly hard one. It is affected by so many other forces. Getting up an hour early is not at all productive if you spend the whole hour trying to wake yourself up. So for this to be worth it you have to go to bed early enough to still get a good amount of sleep. Which means I have to find time to do the things I need to before bed even earlier. Still trying to line all that up.
Water – 10/14
I am so surprised this one front runner. In the past I have been TERRIBLE at water. Once years ago a friend, who is a nurse, asked me how much water I drink. ( I am really embarrassed by this story, but I want to show fellow soda drinkers that you can balance what you drink.) I told her that I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I had had water. It wasn’t days or weeks, but probably months back. She was horrified, but tried to hide it, and honestly I was too. I immediately added it to my diet, but it still wasn’t often or consistent. Today I know the benefits, and how bad all the coke I was drinking is. So I put this one at top priority.
Activity – 6/14
I am not a sports, go run, get outside person. I am a sit and read for hours person, but even that rarely happens. Most of my time is spent managing a tiny human, and I don’t think that really counts as activity for the point of this. A couple of time we had dance parties, or I did yoga on the days I actually got up an hour early, but I haven’t found the right system for this yet.
Cut the Crap – 14/14
Yes! I am so proud of this one. And when I tell you what I cut out this month some of you may laugh or think that isn’t hard enough. That’s ok. This one is hard for me, but it is something I knew I could crush, and I want to start showing myself that I can keep my promises to myself. So I cut candy.
I have gotten into the habit of having one or two or four pieces for “dessert” after a meal. This is the hardest at work. I would keep a big bag of mini chocolates and eat a few every day. Not horrible, but not good either. So when I started I took all the candy home for Derek to finish and I found I spend so much time getting my water in that it hasn’t been too bad. I even have a small bag of candy a friend got me for my birthday that I haven’t even opened. I’m so excited to crack that baby open in July!
Gratitude – 7/14
This one I am pretty mad at myself about. The first week I was really making time for it, bit this is held back by our night time snuggles too. This is the area of our routine that Derek and I are trying to fix right now. We’ve let ourselves get into a few ruts that need to be evened out.
That was a lot of detail, but I think it’s good in the beginning especially to really access each one so I can problem solve.
So let me share a few things that are helping.
Measure out the number of ounces you need and find a system with specific water bottles. I have one at home and one at work that I use.
I removed all the candy from my reach the first week especially to keep the habit from catching me.
I substituted the crap with healthier options that filled the habit in my eating.
I have a few more ideas but I didn’t stick with them this section. Hopefully I’ll see some improvement for my next check in.
Let me know what you think I should try next and use the hashtag if your joining in.
Let’s start with a question. When is the best time to overhaul your life?
At the New Year? Sure. After a bad breakup? Definitely. During a big life change? Maybe not.
But the time that is always right? RIGHT NOW!!
Today.
This moment.
Sweeping declarations are only as good as the moments right after they are uttered. Do you wilt if no one reacts? Then it really isn’t likely to go well. But if you commit to change you can make it reality. What if you kept a promise to yourself? What if every time you make the same new choice you actual build a new expectation in your own mind?
For me “RIGHT NOW” is late May/ early June. I recently discovered Rachel Hollis and am consuming her content like a new favorite novel. Which led me to #Last90Days. Last year she did a challenge to finish off the last quarter of 2017 with intention. I discovered her #FivetoThrive and it was the straw (well, large branch) that broke me. I’ve been headed to this cliff for a long time, wishing things were a little different, hoping I could actually achieve a few things on my list. This past year I’ve been looking at that ledge wondering when, not if, I’d actually take the leap.
And then Rachel pushed me….No that’s not quite right. She encouraged me (fiercely) to jump…and I did!
So here’s the plan. I’m doing her challenge, right now, at the start of the summer, right before my birthday. I’m calling it #In90Days, but it’s the same principle, And I’m sharing this here because this is the thing I’ve been trying to do. Writing, sharing our story.
So every week we’ll talk about the challenge set out by Rachel as well as the dreams I’m walking toward.
Y’all, I am still confused about time. It’s so slow on those hard days, and yet here I am a decade into my marriage. That is a third of my life!
Anywho! I thought I’d process a bit here and share some things I’ve learned since 2008.
First let me say I was SO naïve!!! I thought marriage was just a giant version of dating with lots more compromise involved… I mean I got the compromising part right! Along those same lines, while I was very young and I don’t how I will handle Dominick if he takes a similar path, I have to say I am so thankful God brought us together when he did. I listened to someone explain the topic of the “best” age to marry like this: “Marriage is hard and beautiful. Either you’re young- and you have to grow up together and build a life together and that is hard and beautiful. Or you are older- and you have to merge two independent lives together and that is hard and beautiful.” So really either way it is hard work, but it is beautiful work.
So really I am in awe of how much I have learned AND how much I’ve realized I still have to learn. There are so many things I think we can do better, and yet as we have talked about this milestone with our people I realized I can give us some credit.
We have picked up a few gold stars along the way and maybe even an award or two! I hope God grants us more lessons, learned a little easier, over the next decade.
Disclaimer – we are not perfect, and still need Jesus everyday in our marriage. It is a daily choice to be a team. The lessons we have learned below do not mean we do it perfectly. They are just things we do better and get right more often than not.
Here’s what I’ve got so far:
We fight so much smarter now. – I used to get so anxious, every fight seemed one wrong word away from disaster (not divorce, just emotionally cliff-like). It took years to see how my previous relationships had affected my threat assessment function. Now it’s more likely just arguing. Nothing is so important personally that we put it before each other.
We LISTEN when it really counts. – Derek and I are not robots with perfect recall. But we continue to work toward really giving each other attention when emotions are running high. Since we are fighting smarter we can tell when something is a capital B big deal and we pay attention to that.
We know ourselves better AND we know how to communicate that knowledge to each other. – Derek has always been blunt and very direct, but I am way harder to pin down on just about every topic. So we are coming from different perspectives all the time. One of the best things for me is taking insights from personal reflection and personality research to better understand why I do the things I do. One of my favorites is the Enneagram. You can learn more here, but really quick there are two reason I love this. One- it focuses on why we do what we do, not just what we do. Two- the resource I found for this looks at this through a Christian lens which has much more impact.
I’m sure there are many more little things I could hash out. Let me know if you wanna go deeper into this topic. And tell me your best relationship stabilizing advice (for any type of relationship)!
When I thought about becoming a mom I had pretty typical dreams…well except that I picture four kids which is a little unusual. But what no one tells you when you’re a kid yourself is that families are made in all kinds of ways, and sometimes they take time and a whole lot of help to create. I learned that pretty quickly, but let me catch you up to just a few months before we became a family of three.
It’s the Fall of 2015 and I am in my last year of college. Derek is handling a lot of the mundane parts of adulthood so I can give school my full attention. We are struggling quietly with STILL not getting pregnant after seven years of marriage. Our plan was to begin a more doctor assisted approach in the spring as I headed toward graduation.
Stepping out in faith is never easy. Even when talking to some teens about the best part of my story I was pretty nervous. This was the first time I EVER spoke to a crowd, and it was just as scary as i imagined. But I did it. You can do hard things, God gave me the words and I followed through. You can watch the sessions through these links. Sessions One, Two, and Three.
I finished the series by reading this “Closing Call” by Jennie Allen.
Welcome welcome! This is the new space to find out what the Olivers are up to! I’m giving blogging a real shot (finally) so I can join in on this global community. The more we spread out and the more we “advance,” the more we lose that connection to each other. And yet, the more we spread out and hop around the more diverse our stories become. I’m excited to have a space to share and grow, hopefully with you! Continue reading “Come On By Oliverway”→
