Learn With Me

 

The time has come again to choose a new Daily Challenge for the New Year. 2024s challenge was one of personal growth. Doing one thing for my Physical, Mental, and Spiritual health every day. These are all things I hope to bring into the New Year with me, as I do with all of my challenges, but what to focus on this year? To figure that out I usually look back on how this challenge went.

Spiritual Health

I had a goal to grow closer to God this year. I have yet to make it through the whole Bible and I struggle with praying. So, this year I read or listened to something relating to God every day, usually before even getting out of bed. Starting my day with God helped me understand Him better, helped me understand myself better, and focused my mind on what’s really important before (sometimes after) my brain started running through everything I had to do that day. I stuck to this goal and even expanded on it towards the end of the year. I added writing in my prayer journal every other day to my schedule. Writing down my prayers helped me stay focused and gave God more room to speak since he is often in the middle of my writing already. I plan to bring this part of 2024’s challenge into the New Year and possibly expand upon it. But it’s a habit now, not a challenge, so what to do for 2025?

Physical Health

I have always struggled with exercise. I don’t play sports; I rarely find time to swim which is my favorite form of exercise, and who has the time or desire to go to the gym? But this year I knew I had to do something. My hip is bad and I’m not even 30 yet, I have two little ones (not my own) to run after, and I hope to run after little ones of my own someday too. I knew I needed to start taking better care of my body or it would stop taking care of me. So at minimum I stretched 3 to 5 minutes every morning, before even eating breakfast. On good days I did a 30 minute workout in the morning or did my stretch then went for a walk or a swim later in the day. I wish I had the determination to do more than a quick stretch, but even that made a difference. It’s now been months since I threw my hip out last. I am tired still, but my energy is steadier from day to day. I will certainly be bringing this new habit into the New Year with me, as I have seen too much improvement to ignore. But that’s not my new daily goal this year.

Mental Health

I found I needed to give myself permission to do things I enjoy. I didn’t have the time, or the money, or I felt I just didn’t deserve it. But if my episodes of depression, burnout, and meltdowns taught me anything, it’s that my mental health is just as important as anything else. So I made a goal to do something for me every day. Not surprisingly, this is the goal I had the most trouble with. Not the actually doing things for me part, but remembering to do one every day. I’d be writing down my progress on my goals at the end of the day and not be able to come up with something I did for me. So what I wrote down wasn’t always as “for my mental health” as it was supposed to be. However, successful or not, this did help me slow down and remember to do something that made me happy, especially when I was feeling stressed or overwhelmed. I basically developed a list of things to do in case of a mental health emergency and I know that will be very helpful in the future. This is also something I hope to work on, but more with the intention of maintaining a healthy balance, not necessarily every single day.

So, three very good goals that turned into habits I will be taking into 2025 and many years to come. But what about my new goal? Well, I have two of them, but they are both part of a larger goal. To learn. To learn about topics, learn about myself, to learn about others, to learn how to communicate. Since 2020 there has been a drastic decline in communication especially. We can’t manage to have conversations with each other without ending up in an argument or ending friendships. So many topics are off limits and our world is suffering. We are suffering. I hope that in doing the first part of my Daily Challenge Of 2025, One Question A Day, we can learn how to have conversations again. We can learn new things about each other and about ourselves as we try to answer the questions. And the second part of my challenge is to add more reading to my schedule. I plan to read a few pages in a book every evening. This doesn’t include my bible reading in the morning or the fiction books I read for fun before I go to bed. These will be devotionals, books about how to write, informational books that I can learn something from. There is so much to learn about, and I want to make time in my schedule to do that.

So, will you go on this journey to learn with me this year? To learn how to communicate again? Learn about yourself? Learn about others? Or do you have a different challenge you plan to take on this year? I thank you all for another year of sharing my writing and I wish you all a very happy New Year!

Family Dinner

 

Life is busy, everyone has different schedules, how do you find time in the week for community and family? My answer is Church Sunday morning and Dinner Sunday night.

Church has always been the place I get plugged in to the community. It’s where my neighbors all see each other on Sunday morning and talk about what is going on in the community and what we want to do to for said community. It’s where we lift each other up in prayer and celebrate with each other over healing, accomplishments, and birthdays. Community is an important part of any week and I’m glad my church is my community.

I’m not sure when it started or how it happened, but somehow my whole family (all my family that lives in the area) usually have Sunday nights free. So, what better way to stay in touch then to have Sunday night dinner? It doesn’t happen every single week, but for the most part we find ourselves all pitching in to put some food on either our table or theirs. We spend the time catching everyone up on our week, discussing plans for family outings, just enjoying each other’s company. And on the weeks we don’t end up doing it for one reason or another, I find I miss it. It’s nice having one night a week where we actually sit at the table and enjoy a meal.

I have to be honest; I don’t always pray before I eat, but when we have family dinner we pray. And if we forget, my 4 year old cousin reminds us. It’s usually a simple prayer, thank you for family and for this food amen, but it’s an important part of the evening. Family, community, and God. That’s what Sundays are for. That’s what every day is for. What would life be without the people we love and the God who created us? It would be pretty empty. So, take some time this week to pour into the community and your family because tomorrow, well tomorrow is another Monday.

A Day Of Possibilities

 

“Time isn’t a straight line. It’s all… bumpy-wumpy. There’s loads of boring stuff. Like Sundays and Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons. But now and then there are Saturdays. Big temporal tipping points when anything’s possible.” ~Dr. Who

Every week needs a day that’s full of possibilities. A party? A concert? A day at home with countless options? A day where you can stay up late or go to bed early, do absolutely nothing or go on a fabulous adventure, get deep into a craft project or binge watch a favorite tv show. The day is there just waiting for you and the choice is all yours what you do with it. It’s a “temporal tipping point when anything’s possible” as Dr. Who says. And for my family, and many others, that day tends to be a Saturday.

Saturdays have always been special for me. Most weeks they fill up fast, but it’s always good reasons. It’s when we have birthday parties or family adventures. It’s usually when my craft sales end up being or a musical event. Then sometimes we have the rare occasion when we have absolutely nothing planned and we get some house work done, take on a project, or play games. No matter what we end up doing, Saturday tends to be full of laughter and celebration, of one kind or another.

Saturday is an interesting day. It’s the end but also the beginning. It can salvage a bad week or set the tone for the new one. It truly is a tipping point, full of possibilities and opportunities for change. I think it’s important to have a day of the week where anything is possible. A day when we take time to celebrate life. Whether it’s at a party or enjoying the quiet of a day unplanned, take some time this week to believe that anything is possible, especially on a Saturday.

Life Is A Mess And A Miracle

 

“Who made this BIG mess?” ~Big Comfy Couch

Have you ever had one of those days where your life feels like a mess, nothing is working out, you can’t find that thing you put somewhere safe but now that you need it you can’t remember for the life of you where it is? Then you look around and realize the dishes are piled up, there are clothes all over the floor, and why on earth are there sand toys on my desk? Well, for me that tends to happen on a Friday. Well… it’s not always sand toys… but there is usually something weird on my desk… Anyway, Friday has become the day I clean, organize for the upcoming week, and maybe get a project or two done that I didn’t get to earlier in the week. It’s a day of catch up and clean up so that I can truly enjoy the weekend ahead. Because, as I’ve come to realize:

"The world looks a lot nicer with clean windows" ~Grammy

Of course this goes way beyond cleaning windows. I have found that when my space is a mess, my mind quickly follows. It’s not exactly a conscious thing either. It’s waking up to a pile of clothes on the floor and just letting the pile get bigger as I can’t decide what to wear for the day. It’s realizing I forgot to hang that dress back in the closet and throwing it on top of the pile is so much easier than shoving it in my overstuffed closet because it’s late and I want to go to bed. It’s digging through the pile on my desk for that one clipboard with my lesson plan on it that has now gone missing. It’s realizing my water bottle is still waiting to be washed but now I need to leave or I’m going to be late. It’s remembering my bathing suit is still hanging on the line and it’s supposed to rain tonight. All these little things start adding up, making my everyday life feel like more of a mess than it already did. And my life often feels like a bit of a mess. It feels like there’s nothing I can do to clean it either. How do I clean the things I have little or no control over? But I do have control over something.

"My life was a mess... But I could clean my room" ~To All The Boys I've Loved Before

So, I added cleaning to my schedule. Because life is busy, work takes up so much of my time, family takes up the rest, cleaning becomes an afterthought if I don’t add it to the calendar. Sure, it still piles up sometimes, not every Friday offers the time needed to clean up every mess I happen to make over the week, especially if the week involves any sort of costume… but it helps keep it from getting out of control without monopolizing my weekend. I need time to enjoy life too. Life will always be a bit of a mess, there’s no escaping it, but we can always do our best to keep the messes we can clean up under control. And it doesn’t have to feel like such a chore either. Cleaning up can be freeing, rewarding, sometimes it can even be fun.

"Life is a mess and a miracle. So pick up a broom and dance" ~The Rise And Fall Of Mount Majestic

And before you know it, you’ll be able to see the floor, you’ll find that thing you were missing, you’ll remember why those sand toys are on your desk, you’ll see the world through clean windows, and you’ll realize maybe your life isn’t such a mess after all, especially since tomorrow, well, tomorrow it’ll be Saturday.