starting today

I love the idea of goal setting and new beginnings and lists, and there's even more motivation to do all of those things at this time of year. But, I don't want to limit myself to January 1, 2015, or January 1 of any other year, for that matter. So, I'm starting now.

A week or so ago, I had the idea that I want to focus more on love in my life. Loving God. Loving others. Loving myself. I realized that our society both inundates us with this idea that we should love ourselves and buy this and do that because we deserve it and we are awesome and at the same time tells us that we should spend our time and energy and money on others.

The people who are really awesome never take time for themselves. Look at how self-sacrificial she is. Look at how much he does.

But, if there's one thing I've learned from graduate school, it's that if I'm not taking care of myself, there's no way I can provide the best care for anyone else. (At the same time, when I'm feeling most selfish in my marriage, reaching out to love my husband tends to fill both of us.)

So, I want to spend more time exploring this concept of love. In pre-practicum over a year ago, we learned a technique that focused on death and regrets. I happened to be the client during the exercise, and I still remember that the student who acted as therapist in that class said that it sounded like my regret at death would be fear that I hadn't loved enough.

So, here goes. My goal is to reflect each week-ish on how I'm loving my husband, other family and friends, the community at large, and myself. I might only write about one of those areas, but I want to keep myself more accountable in this endeavor.

My other goal is to create a more peaceful and welcoming environment at home. Now that I've graduated, I have slightly more time to dedicate to getting back on a homemaking schedule. I want to clean the house more regularly and frequently and I would like to organize and redecorate some things.

My third major goal is to read the Word more often. During home life group, I admitted that my biggest excuse to not engaging with the Word more often is to skim a devotional in the morning and then say I'll go back and really study it later. (Later never happens, by the way.) So, I want to be more intentional with reading the Word and praying and really focusing on Scripture.