2020

As we near the end of January, the first month of 2016, I have to say I'm pretty excited about how well we've done at being intentional . When I read Jenni's blog , stating that she tries to read a book every week of the year, it not only got me excited about reading a book a week, but it also made me ask, "What else do I want to be intentional about every week?" I came up with a list of 6 things: read a book,  write a blog,  have a date night,  participate in a church/spiritual activity,  go for a hike (somewhere different every week!), and  serve others.  Serve was my word last year, but I admittedly wasn't very good at it. But this year, I am already doing better at serving than I did last year simply by being intentional about it. And it is amazing how it has shaped my conversation with Randy. Now, when we get together after our work days, instead of asking, "How was your day?" we start with, "What did you do for someon...

Rand and I were just settling into our seats at church on Sunday when one of the pastors, starting in on the announcements, said, "We all need to be INTENTIONAL ..." I elbowed Rand and said, "Shut up!" To which he cracked up laughing. The word INTENTIONAL has been showing up everywhere in my life this January. From church to books I'm reading, date nights that DateBox has been planning for us and everywhere in between. I remember the same was true the year that my word was "embrace." But that is the whole point of adopting a word of the year: to look for it, to notice it, to let it be your guide. The pastor went on to challenge us to be  INTENTIONAL  about our relationship with Jesus this year (which is something I wanted to be INTENTIONAL about anyway!) by doing 3 things: committing to daily time with God, a weekly tithe to God, and being involved in regular fellowship. The first two are easier for me, but I haven't made a point of gett...

By way of update, I've already read 4 books this year! This being intentional thing is really panning out. :) One of the things I've noticed as I've been reading more lately is that there is a lot of "middle." At the beginning of the story, you find out what is missing in the main character's life, what their dream is, what dream got stolen, what they need in order to have their "happy ending." Then, at the end of the book, they get whatever it was they were looking for -- or something better, something they didn't know they were looking for but is what they really needed all along. And the rest is all middle. Anywhere from 120 to 400 pages of middle. Ups and downs. So close yet so far. It's after they have their dream but before it comes to fruition. The Bible is like this too. Randy and I just finished reading the book of Job. In the first two chapters, we meet Job, a guy who has everything going for him, and then who has it all t...

Yesterday morning I finished writing a short devotional book that I had been working on for the past two weeks. Randy came home early and said he was taking me to lunch to celebrate. Followed by a hike. Followed by an evening of music with good friends at one of our local wineries. It wasn't a huge project, and yet it was an accomplishment nonetheless. I have other, weekly projects that I could have immediately moved on to, but because we are living INTENTIONALLY this year there were other things on our "list" that we wanted to do this week. Hike. Spend quality time with one another, with friends. And celebrate. Celebrating wasn't something I came in to the new year wanting to be INTENTIONAL about. But it feels like a worthy addition. And something we don't do often enough as adults. Consider your Facebook feed. If it is anything like mine it is filled with kids and their first everythings: first outfit, first laugh, first picture with grandma, first soli...

Even with the best of INTENTIONS , one of the challenges of life is that things rarely go according to plan. It was the story of my day yesterday. I had planned on finishing one writing project in the morning so that I could move on to another in the afternoon. But the morning project ended up taking all day. Which means more work for me today. It was the story of my day Sunday. Randy and I had planned on going to breakfast and then the 9:45 service at church, but when we arrived at our local diner, we knew there was no way we could get served, eat, and still make it to church on time. We decided to sit down at the diner anyway. We laughed as we played Trivial Pursuit with the cards that they place on every table, we chatted with the people at the table next to us, and eventually we enjoyed a delicious breakfast scramble. By that point, church had been going for 30 minutes, so instead of speeding across town and sneaking in late, we went to a nearby walking trail and enjoy...

One of my goals for living more intentionally this year is to read more books. I have always loved to read and I don't even care the subject. Fiction, non-fiction, romance, spirituality, kids books, sports, animals, history, technical... I love it all. Some years (seasons of life?) I don't have to be intentional at all about reading. I just always have a book at hand. But other times months will go by when I don't read anything unless I have to for school or work. Last year a friend of mine declared in January that she was going to read 15 books in 2015. That didn't sound like very many books to me. And yet, looking back, I'm not sure I can honestly say that I read that many. At least not in their entirety. (When did I develop this habit of starting books and not finishing them??) Maybe I read a dozen books last year. Maybe. Needless to say, the last couple of years have been slow reading years for me. Mostly because of my job. When you write for a living...

At the end of 2012, I reflected on the year I had just survived. It was one marked with obedience to God, both failing to be obedient and succeeding. I was determined to not just survive, but to live and thrive in the year to come. And to do so I realized I didn't have to wait until the end of the year to look back on whether or not I had succeeded. I could decide in January who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live in the coming year. So I claimed "one word" to help guide and define me. My "one word" in 2013 was EMBRACE. Each day I lived with intention, embracing everything from pajamas  to expiration dates , boundaries to answered prayer , triathlons to hibernation . That year gave me the confidence, the readiness, the opportunity to walk across Spain as a single woman in 2014 and again with my husband in 2015 . Those experiences also allowed me to live with intention, but in a very different way. Particularly in 2014. From day 1 on , I learned that w...