When I picked my Word of the Year for 2019, this blog wasn’t what it is today. It was still my Professional Organization business page. I had a couple of blog post, but I never encouraged people to read them. They were just there. So I didn’t need to explain my Word of the Year or talk about it. But like my blog post, it was just floating around.
Towards the end of 2018, around September/October, I was starting to feel a shift. I was a wife and a business owner, but things weren’t feeling all that settled for me. I had quit my job to start my business and stay home and do a better job of supporting my husband. I was active and plugged in at church. I was leading a small group. I was feeling the pull to get into God’s Word. I felt like I was doing all of the right things but still felt off. My Word of the Year for 2018 was Intentional, and I was owning and doing that quite well. But I wasn’t present much in my home. I prayed about my feelings, and I felt God respond to me with Growth. And just like that, I had my Word of the Year for 2019.
After the beginning of the year, a few friends and I got together to do vision boards, which turned into vision notebooks. I will tell you right now, that notebook barely got used this year. But more on what it turned into later. After creating our vision notebooks, we made some goals and documented what we felt like our action steps should be. Here are mine:
Faith: Build my personal relationship with God through His Word
Action Step: Create a Bible Study calendar of what I want to study
Family: Spend more time focusing on how to make my home healthy
Action Step: Cook and eat dinner together at least 3x a week
Finances: Create and stick with a budget
Action Step: Have monthly conversations with Chris about our budget
Friendship: Focus on quality friendships, not quantity
Action Step: Continue to hang out and relax with friends at home (mine or theirs)
Fitness: Walk as a form of exercise
Action Step: Walk around the neighborhood at least 1x a week
At first glance, I failed three out of five of these. And one was done unintentionally. As much as I could look at this as a failure, I won’t because I’ve seen God move in so many ways this year and I have experienced growth like never before. I remember when I was praying about growth, I felt like God reminded me (possibly through a quote I’ve seen) that asking for growth means to expect some stretching. But I never expected the type of stretching and growth I received.
Faith: Build my personal relationship with God through His Word
Action Step: Create a Bible Study calendar of what I want to study
I did not do this action step. Well, I did partly. I accomplished my main goal of building my personal relationship with God through His Word. When I went on my sabbatical at the beginning of this year, I was so broken. I felt like I had no choice but to spend time with God. I knew He was the only one, and the only way I would be able to be healed. I had no clue what I was doing most of the time, but I still let God guide me. I’ll be releasing a new series on my blog soon that goes into depth on not only what God taught me to do during this time, but what He wanted me to share. I was able to build a daily habit of, at the very least, reading God’s Word. I was apart of a few online Bible studies while I was gone. I also created an ongoing list of topics in Evernote I want to study. I feel like the result of all of this is that I know God more, I feel God more, and I’m listening to God more.
Family: Spend more time focusing on how to make my home healthy
Action Step: Cook and eat dinner together at least 3x a week
I ran away from Florida, including my home, in February. And I didn’t return into July. So I didn’t do this action step either. But I ran TO family. During those five months I was traveling, I stayed at four different family members houses. We talked, we cooked, we ate, we laughed, we cried (okay I mostly cried), we loved on each other. I skipped going home for the holidays in 2018, and I truly felt like that contributed to me feeling broken. But while I may have ignored my immediate homefront, God knew I needed the love and support of my extended family. I’m so thankful for them. I was able to hear stories that explained our history. Stories that provided a sense of healing in some areas of my life.
Finances: Create and stick with a budget
Action Step: Have monthly conversations with Chris about our budget
Man, did I feel the impact of this one! So not only did I not create a budget, but I turned over all things related to money over to my husband. When I say, I ran away; I ran away. I didn’t have a care about anything. Our house. Our bills. NOT A THING. And because I was no longer managing the money, that meant I no longer had access to money. Thank God for my family because that allowed me to have shelter and food, but I no longer had the lifestyle I used to, and that took a while to get accustomed to. But it taught me what I needed vs. what I wanted. It helped me to see how much waste I had in my spending. It helped me to stop spending. And even now that I am back home and have access to money again, I choose not to spend. I’m more careful about what I think we need. It’s even changed some of my long term goal planning.
Friendship: Focus on quality friendships, not quantity
Action Step: Continue to hang out and relax with friends at home (mine or theirs)
Man oh man did this one hit hard. First, I didn’t do anything intentionally for this one. But something about leaving for five months does something for superficial friendships. Second, I am still walking through this one. I learned during this time how many Sunday only friends I had. Meaning, I only saw them on Sundays when I went to church. Or my physical presence sparked a reminder to chat or see each other later in the week. So after a couple of weeks of being gone, my phone became pretty quiet. But again, God knew what He was doing. I needed all of the voices away from me. I needed to stop looking for approval from others. And I didn’t realize how bad it was until most of everyone went away. What hurts the most is I did lose a few that I thought were super close to me. But it also made me realize I wasn’t that great of a friend either. I seriously needed to look at what Biblical friendship looked like and how to offer it to others. It’s funny that my goal was to focus on quality friendships, and that is precisely what happened. I can say that the quality of the friendships I have are getting better. BUT with that, I say, not everyone is my friend. Some people are just acquaintances. Even more, are my brothers and sisters in Christ. Which of course, changes who gets what access to me.
Fitness: Walk as a form of exercise
Action Step: Walk around the neighborhood at least 1x a week
This was so simple, but the furthest thing from my mind. I didn’t even try to accomplish this. If you know me, you know I always joke about being allergic to exercise. And while going away on my sabbatical and coming back all fit and healthy would have been great, it just wasn’t even on my radar. Especially being around family that loves to cook and eat as much as I do. But I will explain more about this in a later blog post.
Okay, this wasn’t a topic with an action step. But I wanted to share what came out of my year of growth. This did. This being my blog. While on my Sabbatical, I read The Alchemist, and it sparked me to do some writing. Remember that vision notebook I created? This is where I wrote about my fears, random thoughts, and ideas that popped into my head, what I wanted to do. Most of it was just rambling, but I felt like I needed to share what I was learning in a more structured format. I had previously started to share bits and pieces on my Instagram, but I realized I wanted to change up my website. I had already received confirmation that I was done with the business, so the site was sitting there. I started to map out what I wanted the blog to be. And I realized today that I’m not sure I have been all that clear and it may be taking a direction I didn’t intend. And while that can be good in some ways if God is directing you that way, it can also be harmful if its a distraction. Being able to discern between the two is essential. So I want to clarify what my blog is.
My blog documents my journey of growth. It is God and His Word, first and foremost that is guiding me. As I take this journey, I come across books, podcast, shows, movies, messages, people, quotes, etc. through my research that allows me to continue to grow. I want to share that with all of you. And not just to say, look at me I am growing. But to say, if you are struggling, you are not alone, here is what helped me, I hope it helps you.
I realized my blog has been a little more lopsided towards books. While that is my passion, getting in a reading rut lately helped me realize that is not all that I use to help me grow. And while my social media tends to show more of a variety, I wasn’t showing that on my blog. So I need to do better going forward. The good thing is, God has been downloading a lot of stuff into me that has me digging deeper and researching more. I already have over 30 blog posts drafted up with ideas. I’ve been taking this blogging thing seriously for about three months now, and I thank you for joining me so far. I hope you stick around and continue to see how this journey is going. My biggest prayer is that you know that you are never alone, and God is always guiding you. Be on the lookout for my 2020 Word of the Year. It’s a God thing because there is no way I would have picked this one.
What was your Word of the Year for 2019? Have you picked your 2020 one yet?
