Part of Step 2 from Lara Casey's 2015 Goal Setting is to write about what gets you fired up! What are you passionate about? What do you love to talk about, surround yourself with, spend time involved in. How can you take steps towards doing MORE of what you love? Because let's be real, if we're surrounding ourselves in these heart-pumping, magical activities, we'll be happier people. Everyone is passionate about something. Not everyone is passionate about the same thing. So I think it's important to find what makes YOU passionate. Even the small things. Like taking a bubble bath. Listening to a certain song that influences your heart. Drinking coffee while you read the bible. Laughing with your kids. Baking. Reading. Dancing. Traveling. What ever it is, DO more of it. Make a list. Ready.. GO!
Following along with Lara Casey's Goal Setting posts this week, I'm determined to grow from this. I've never followed through on projects; I always do it for a week and then lose interest and quit. I don't like this aspect of my social creative personality. I'm flaky. There I said it. If I can't do something perfectly, I don't want to do it all. I struggle so hard. I'm determined to use blogging to learn something about myself, to challenge myself, to share His story, and to love on others. If you want to read Lara Casey's posts about Goal Setting in 2015, start here. I am on step 2 and you can read her post on that here. Step 2 is all about admitting to yourself what didn't work for you last year. I started writing it in my notebook and separated it into categories so that I could go through each area of my life and remember what challenges I faced in these areas. My faith. I had a lot of fear this year. And that just really did NOT work for me. I'll be honest: we believe that we're in the final years of this earth. We believe that Jesus is coming for us soon. And as much as that fact should bring me joy, it also brings me fear. "But God, I haven't had a baby yet!" We are naturally selfish beings. God made us; He knows. And I fear that I'm not going to have enough time to be with my children, to raise them, to teach them how to see the world as temporary; all while there are hundreds of thousands of people living on this earth who are living in terror for their very lives and are yearning for their Savior. And I'm over here like "Hey, if we could wait until I meet my kid, that would be great." *Face palm* Fear is NOT of God. Fear is from the enemy. So, that didn't work for my heart this last year. I'm determined to have faith. I'm determined to trust God's will for my life. When I found myself becoming overwhelmed, afraid, stressed, worried and I didn't stop, drop, and pray. That didn't work for me. Peace was only a few moments away from me at all times but I chose to live in those moments alone. It's silly, isn't it? Why wouldn't I call out to THE Lifeguard if I'm drowning? Pride? Yeah, that's no longer an option. Not reading the word. Simple as that. My soul was hungry and thirsty and I denied myself that. For what? More sleep? More TV time? Social media? These faucets wont fill me up; they'll consume me. Apparently, there's an awesome church here in our small town. I say "apparently" because I've never been there. Every single weekend, we've driven home to Amarillo and either, attended our beloved church there (we really love our church!) or sleep in and not go. I'm ready to have a church family. I'm ready to be apart of a community. So, avoiding this amazing church is a challenge I'm going to have to overcome. I know there are blessings waiting to happen! My marriage. Going to bed without praying out loud with my husband. We pray like maybe two or three nights a week together. That is so dumb. I've seen the enemy lurking in so many people's marriages, just waiting to divide and conquer. And the easiest way to prevent that is by praying out loud together, declaring promises over our lives, protection over our marriage, and God's guidance in our decisions. That should be a daily no-brainer. Our biggest struggle and the main cause of our arguments last year was money and budgeting. I remember hearing that statistic a lot before we got married, and I'd think to myself "We'll never fight about that!" Yea, no. That was our main issue. But thankfully, we're already taking steps to fix it. We're signed up for a Dave Ramsey class in March. SO EXCITED! I will blog about this as we go through it. Family relationships. I didn't talk to my family enough last year by phone, by text, by email, by snail-mail. Not working. I have unresolved issues with people close to me in my family that I've been avoiding and stressing about. It ate up a lot of my time last year worrying or having conversations in my head with them. Marcus would come home for lunch and I'd be spinning because I had been lecturing someone all morning. (We didn't have internet or cable). I gave a poor guy on the phone a piece of my mind one morning after someone from his business taped a flier to our brand new front door and when I pulled it off, it pulled off the paint. Marcus was like "honey, are you okay?" I immediately started bawling and told him that I had been having a hypothetical conversation in my head all morning. That poor man on the phone! It's time to release that and pray for peace. The only person it's hurting is me. I didn't say thank you enough. I didn't express how grateful I am for what and who I have in my life. Friendships
Friends for a reason, friends for a season, friends for a lifetime. I am a social person. I like to be around people and talk. It's a hobby that makes me happy. I was able to spend a lot of time with my lifelong friends last year and that made me a happy girl. This year, I would like to be better about talking to those friends about things that matter. About their heart. About their dreams. About their needs. About Jesus. "Let my words speak life, let my words speak truth. I don't want to say a word which doesn't point the world back to you." I hope that all my friendships are "lifetimers" but I know realistically, that's not possible. So, in case I don't always know the people I'm surrounded by now, I hope they know what my heart stands for, and that I'll always be there to pray for them or love on them in any way I can. I have a friendship that was broken several years ago, and I need to mend it. I let it pass me by last year, and I'm determined to fix it or at least get some closure from it in 2015. Health As I've said before, I love Lara Casey Isaacson. I love her heart. I love her mission. I love her dreams. I know, I've never met this women. But she just seems like someone I'd want to take my hands in hers and pray for me over the island of her kitchen while a big batch of biscuits bakes in the oven, the bible on the counter between us. I love that she allows herself to be vulnerable and still before God. That touches my heart in so many ways. Mrs. Isaacson is all about setting goals. BIG HEART STOPPING GOALS. She wrote the book Make It Happen which I can't wait to buy. Maybe for my birthday! Anyway, she is kicking her year off with step by step Goal Setting Challenge, and encourages others to use her book, her Power Sheets, or a journal (or a blog!) to follow along. Before deciding on goals, she suggests we take a look back at how God blessed us in 2014. 2014 in Review Marcus, his parents, his brother and Kevin, and I went to Santa Fe in January to relax for a weekend, ski, and spend time together. I love the mountains so much. I always forget just how much until we're in the middle of them. I realize that not everyone gets to take vacations like this with their families and it makes me thankful that I have such awesome in-laws who take the time to spoil us on trips like these. In March, my best friend married her best friend and we celebrated so much! It was the first wedding I had the honor to be apart of as an adult, and seeing the love on these beautiful people's faces was so real and so inspiring that I know it helped me see, from the outside, why encouraging marriage is so so so important. I was also experiencing being in the same place, relationship-wise, as my best friend of 15 years. My heart is warmed by knowing that we're on the same adventure and we get to love on and pray for each other through the highs and the lows. Her husband is a coach, too, so we get to be uplifting in that aspect as well! I also have to say that through our weddings, our marriages, and our prayers for each other, our relationship is one that I cherish so much. I'm so thankful we continually made time to see each other last year and connect on what matters most. Love this girl! In April, we felt God pursuing our hearts about a big move. Marcus was offered a job coaching football and baseball at the varsity level. I don't think we've ever prayed so hard in our lives. It meant moving. It meant leaving our city (only by forty-five minutes!). It meant I would be driving an hour to school twice a week. It meant I would have to leave my job at the preschool. It meant a demanding schedule for Marcus and a lot of alone time for me. We seriously needed two angel sightings and a trumpet blast. And boy, did God give us everything we needed. AND MORE. We learned how to make decisions with God leading the way. We learned how to not be afraid to ASK God specifically what we needed to feel safe and secure when moving from season to season. The whole experience was scary, stressful, and oh, so rewarding! Ultimately, making that decision together pulled us closer to God and each other, and I am so thankful for that. Marcus accepted the job, we decided to build a house, and we moved in with my in-laws for the summer. Side note: I love my in-laws. Love. Love. Love. And I'm so thankful, so GRATEFUL, that they love us enough to take newly-weds into their home for a summer. They deserve many crowns in heaven for that! Insert blushing bride emoji here. ;] I'd like to say the decision to build a house in a small town was one we really prayed hard for. But, surprisingly, it wasn't. It was a no-brainer actually. The price of house that we budgeted for was getting us twenty to thirty year old houses that needed a lot of work. The real estate in our little town isn't crazy booming, but it's definitely steady. Rent houses go pretty quickly thanks to many plants that fuel the economy of our town and it brings in families, many of them refugees, so that wasn't the best option either. Our realtor took one look at our not-so-impressed faces and said "Hey! Why don't we go tour a New-Build!" Like three days later, we signed the contract on one of those pretty new-builds and the rest is history. Can I just say, God took care of EVERYTHING. We asked for a house; He gave us a BRAND NEW BEAUTIFUL, CUSTOMIZABLE HOME. I was blown away. That's what happens when we step out of the boat and trust God. He rewards his children. We moved in the last weekend of September. Over the summer, we celebrated our one year anniversary in Oklahoma City. We tried to spend as much time together as we could before football started. When camps and try-outs began in July, Marcus moved in with another football coach and his family. The Atchinson's were so good to us, I can't even believe how lucky we got. It can be hard to be the new wife in a group of coach's wives, but thankfully, so many of us were new this year, so we all got to experience our first season together on the same page. Many of the women have been doing this for years and they showed us the ropes. I'm still learning. I'm learning that there is a way to do it and a way not to do it. As the wife of a football coach, you can either make things really easy on your husband, or not. Coaches' after-game family get-togethers are either fun or really quiet. I hosted the last game of the season at our house and was so thankful that we won that night so that we could all just relax! I've made sweet friends this year and I've learned that we're all going through the same things. We love our husbands. We respect the game. We respect others. And all in all, we just want them to be happy. and a win would be greeeeaaaaat. :] If I had to name one thing I learned last year, it would be the value of silence. When we moved into the house, we didn't have cable. Marcus would come home from work, and I would have been home for hours in complete silence. I think he was a little worried about me! He'd come home, and I'd be in my head, because that's where I had been all day. He would constantly say, "What exactly have you been doing all day?" I learned how to sit with my bible open, a journal beside it, and my pens and markers and highlighters at the ready. I learned how to stay focused on Christ. Driving back and forth to Amarillo became a great time for me to talk to God, worship, think, and process. The drive is forty-five minutes, which if we lived in Dallas, wouldn't be a big deal. In fact, that's how we justified it when we first moved. "Oh, everyone in Dallas drives a commute like that daily!" Yea... accept there are buildings and billboards and people and gas stations and Starbucks. On my drive, there is nothing. Nada. Zip. I have to make sure that I have at least a forth of a tank of gas before I leave or I will be stranded. But then, I experienced something beautiful as I drove to Amarillo one morning as the sun was rising. Passing over the Canadian River, I saw God's beauty. And I was blessed by that. We spent all of our holidays here at home,enjoying our new home, our sweet family, and our wonderful friends. It was so nice to have Marcus home for two weeks, uninterrupted. There's a good chance we spent 95% of that time lying on my in-laws couch and just...resting. But, it was much needed after a crazy busy semester. We enjoyed family, welcomed in another beautiful baby girl from Marcus's cousin Mandi and her husband, Zack. We spent plenty of time in the company of our awesome friends and rang in the new year happy and healthy. What more could a girl ask for? So, that's my year in review! Lots of memories, lots of love, and a lot of prayer. God is Good, y'all. Here's to 2015!
-Kinsey "I don't want easy answers or quick answers because I have a tendency to mishandle the blessings that come too easy or too quickly. I take the credit or take them for granted. So now I pray that it will take long enough and be hard enough for God to receive all of the glory. I'm not looking for the path of least resistance; I'm looking for the path of greatest glory." - Mark Batterson, The Circle Maker
|