Tag: Sabbatical

Categories
Faith Family Marriage

In The Middle of a Hard Marriage

When I settled on marriage as one of my March themes for Year of Healthy, I had no intention of actually writing about it.  I mentioned that it was extremely personal, and I hadn’t been released to from God or my husband.  Then one weekend, while talking with Chris, we were going over how we both have had some wins lately.  In our marriage and out of our marriage.  We recognized that it was because of God and openly gave Him praise.  Then I started to think about some of the advice I’ve been given throughout our marriage.  What worked and what didn’t work.   I thought about the research I did when I was struggling and what I found and what I didn’t find.  One of the things that I did not see was someone that was in the middle of difficulties and what they did.  So many people gave advice multiple years removed from their struggles.  The frustrating part would be, when they reminisced about having a difficult time, but couldn’t tell you how they overcame them.  I vividly remember only two people that were able to give me advice on what they did (I will mention that these two people, we look to as wise counsel, and they have sat with us multiple times, mostly individually).  So after talking to Chris about that, I told him I wanted to share our “in the middle.”  He gave me his blessing, and I believe, that, and the fact that this even popped into my mind, was God’s way of saying do it.  I will say this will obviously be written from my perspective and thoughts.  Chris will read it before it’s published (as he does any post where he is mentioned, or the information may be sensitive to us – like when finance was my topic).  My goal is to write in such a way that I don’t have to remove anything.

Very Little Background

Today, we are celebrating eight years of marriage.  In the midst of 2019, I would have told you that each year was getting harder. Before marriage, I was someone who was driven, strong-willed, and a planner.  I knew exactly how I wanted my life to go, and I followed that plan.  And expected it to continue when I got married.  But the first three years, disrupted that plan.  Now to be fair, I want to point out that we had some outside factors that impacted our marriage that we could not prevent.  The first three years were lived in a blur. Those first three years, we were in survival mode and didn’t have time to have problems.  Once things settled, though, that is when our problems started.  The next five years were hell because we refused to deal with those earlier issues or communicate at all.

But I also thought I knew what was right.  That plan I created?  Even though things didn’t go that way, I expected us to get back on track.  And when it didn’t happen, I focused on other things.  But because I wasn’t successful at being a wife, I started questioning every other role in my life.  I eventually lost who I was.  Now, this wasn’t at the fault of my husband.  More so from what I exposed myself to.  Other people and marriages that I was trying to mimic ours around.  Things that I wanted to do that were discouraged. Somethings I didn’t want to do, that was pushed on me. I was so unhappy that I was willing to change anything.  So I tried to do what I saw people who appeared to be happy do.  This is the dangerous part of building a community.  I got to a point where I couldn’t take any of it anymore.  If you have read some of my previous posts, you will know that in 2019, I left for what I call a sabbatical.  During that time, I strengthened my relationship with God and dived into His Word.  I focused on me.  I had to work through all of this when I realized I didn’t know who I was anymore.  I couldn’t tell you what I liked.  And what I could come up with (for example reading), I hadn’t done in ages.  It was time for a change, so I started working on me.

But I Can Change Him

Now, some advice that I have been given a bunch of times was I can’t change Chris.  And I tried to—a lot. I fought against this advice because I wasn’t the problem.  He was, and he had all types of issues to work out. It took me a while, but I realized that this was toxic thinking.  Because I was trying to make myself out to be perfect. I was also speaking horribly over my life partner. And let’s be real, the problems in our marriage, clearly showed that HIS issues were really OUR issues.  So all of the years, I spent trying to get him to change was wasted.  Because guess what? You can’t change another person.  Well, you kind of can, but we will get to that in a second.  But one thing you can for sure change is yourself.  Give me a moment to explain because if you were like me, you are probably yelling at your screen, saying, “I am not the problem!”

After a million times trying to change Chris, I gave up.  It was exhausting; I was drained; I was tired.  I decided to become selfish.  But in a good way. I went searching for things that bought me joy.  Because of my personality, a lot of that ended up being self-improvement things.  I was reading again.  I was listening to podcasts.  What I was watching on T.V. was either educational or funny.  Now, to be completely honest,  this was shortly after a time where God was convicting me on the useless things I allowed to come into my spirit.  I wasn’t listening to secular music.  I wasn’t watching movies with a bunch of cursing and sex scenes.  But I want to be clear that although this is something that God convicted me on, it ended up helping me find me and what I enjoyed again. I also focused on how each thing could be applied to my life and what changes I could make because of what I was taking in.  This became a big part of why I created this blog and what I try and showcase.  How I saw things and thought about things was changing.  What I worried and stressed over was changing.  And then I realized, maybe how I was handling my marriage was wrong.  So my prayer became, God, how can I become the wife you need me to be for Chris?  I finally realized that Chris wasn’t going to change.  But I could. I was already starting to see what focusing on me was doing. What would happen if instead of doing this for me, I did it for my marriage? My relationships with others? My community?  I started to focus on being a better person for others after I took the time to focus on me.

That’s Great And All But What About My Marriage

Now our marriage didn’t magically become better.  I had moments where I slipped up.  Things were still pretty rough.  But after one particularly bad argument, we were told to do somethings that I think added to the work I was already doing.  We were told to do a daily devotional together.  And for Chris to pray out loud for me every day.  We were giving some other things to do, but those two things are what we were told to start with that we are currently doing.  We are doing the Kingdom Marriage Devotional by Tony Evans (I’m also reading the book on my own).  The devotional is formated in a brief 1 1/2 page devotional, three application questions, and a prayer.  Specifically, the questions have allowed us to be open and honest and communicate with each other about things that are important to our marriage.  Things that we had long forgotten about or just didn’t seem relevant to each other.  This paved the way for conversations that came from our answers, us sharing our concerns, and just being able to talk again.  It was a safe space to say, “this is the problem I have, and I would like to work through it.”  We always add to the prayer that Dr. Evans gives and try to cover things that we spoke about in our answers.  Chris also prays over me before he leaves for work.  This has made me feel loved and appreciated. We have started to dream again and talk about goals.  The important part is we are back communicating.

We are a long way from our problems being fixed.  We still have to do work every single day. But we see fruit from this.  In our marriage and our individual lives.  I think this is because we finally found the right order to things (thanks to the book).  My husband had to come under submission to Christ as the head of our household.  Not saying that wasn’t done previously, but it wasn’t done with intentionality and wholeheartedly.  At the same time (and that part is essential), I had to come under the submission of my husband.  Now I have always believed in the husband being the head of the household.  But my actions didn’t always show this.  I mentioned I was a strong-willed and driven person.  So I thought I knew best and didn’t honestly want to hear my husband’s opinion.  This was wrong in so many ways, but mainly because we are in a partnership, and I shouldn’t discount his thoughts and suggestions.  I was, also, 100 times nicer and more accepting of other people’s views and opinions outside my home.  But what I have learned from this is, the more I come under actual submission under Chris, the more apparent it is that we really are in this together.  He isn’t trying to rule me.  He listens to my ideas, and we, as a couple, create a solution.

Speak Life and Praise God

Changing my thought life and what I speak, also helped a ton.  I wrote about affirmations and manifesting before, but I started to put this into action.  I began to talk to Chris like the man and husband I knew he could be through Christ.  I spoke positively about our marriage.  I spoke scripture over us.  I asked God to let me be a wife that Chris can love, and he be the husband that I could respect. (Ephesians 5:33)  Allow us to be indeed one flesh.  (Genesis 2:24) Allow us to fulfill our marital duties to each other. (1 Corinthians 7:3).  I also spoke some specific scripture over the goals we had together and individually.  And actually, in my Bible reading now, I specifically look for things that I can turn into prayers and affirmations.  Characteristics of people that God found righteous.  Verses that speak to our identity in Christ.  So…many…proverbs.  I was previously one of those people that was making prayer so hard, and therefore, I struggled.  But God’s Word is so full of things that we can pray over ourselves and our loved ones.  This has made such a huge difference in how I have felt, how I look at situations, and how I handle things.  I am still not 100%, but I’ve come a long way, and it’s important to acknowledge that.

Lastly, it is important to give praise and honor to God for what He is doing in our marriage and our lives.  I make it a point to thank Him daily (multiple times a day really) for what He is doing.  Even if that particular day was terrible, I still thank Him for the work He is doing in our marriage and lives.  This frequently leads to me being thankful for other things and talking to God about what He is doing and His attributes.  I never want to forget who it was that made this happen.  Who allowed us to be able to do the work.  I know for me specifically, when I turned to build my relationship and foundation with God, and then when we brought Him into our marriage, mountains moved.  And to think, it started with me realizing that no, I couldn’t change him, but God could if He saw fit.  Thank God that He ended up changing us both.

Tl;dr? Marriage is hard.  We are in the middle of one now.  Here is what we are doing:

*Get closer to God.  Get selfish.  Focus on you and start doing what brings you joy.

*Don’t mimic other marriages.

*Pray about how YOU can change and do better

*Do a daily devotional with your husband.  Preferably, one with questions.

*Have your husband pray over you, out loud, each day.

*Get your house in order, and both of you come under submission: Christ -> Husband -> Wife

*Speak life into your husband and pray scripture over them.

*Give praise and honor to God along the way.

Categories
All 66 Books

#All66Books: I Did It!…Kind of

I’m interrupting my regular scheduled All 66 Books series post by giving a long overdue update.  If you need to catch up on this series, go here and here.

I have officially finished reading the whole Bible.  In under ten months.  For the first time in my 31 years.  Every book, every chapter, every verse.  I say that I did it, but in all reality, this was totally a God thing. This past year and some change have been the most distracting and unfocused of my life.  So to have accomplished something that is a massive feat during that time makes me so grateful.

So this makes me a perfect Christian, right? I mean, I read the full Bible! Who does that besides maybe pastors? Wrong! I ain’t Jesus, so I am far from perfect.  And I have seen so many wonderful people diving into their Bibles and reading them over time and time again.  I’ve even heard so many stories of non-Christians reading it because, after all, it is a fantastic piece of historical literature.  But I still struggle with life.  I still have questions.  I still feel like I have no clue what is going on.  But I have hope.  I have confidence.  I have scripture backed prayers that help me get through day by day.

When I started this journey, I was seeking a deeper relationship with Christ.  And I didn’t think that was possible without reading the Words that He left behind for us.  Have I found that? I truly have.  I feel like my hunger for God and His Word has grown.  I feel like I am more likely to seek God first during situations.  Or earlier in areas I am still struggling in.  I find myself remembering things that I read more.  And I have this strong urge to continue.  I am blessed that I am in a position that I can do this every year.

What are my plans next?

I’ve talked about what I am currently doing a little in this post here, but here are more details. My day to day reading is in the New Testament.  I’ve pretty much been in the Old Testament since June, so I am ready to get a refresher on the NT.  Not to mention, I didn’t start using my color coding/highlighting system in my CSB Day to Day Chronological Bible until Genesis, so rereading the NT allows me to do that.  For my deeper studying, I am starting with Acts and using BibleTalk.TV to go through the book.  I also heard recently about a church that has done sermons on every book of the Bible, verse by verse.  I’m going to check them out (online) and share them if I like them.

While going through my first reading of the Bible, I documented almost 75 different topics I wanted to dive deeper into.  For example, finding out if affirmations and manifesting are biblical concepts (check this post out), looking into the different prophets, glorification.  I feel like these are things that God specifically stopped me for.  While doing my more in-depth study (starting with Acts), as these topics come up again, I’m going to pause and flesh these out.  You will probably see more of this information in my Rhenáe’s Randoms posts.  Speaking of posts, I am going back to posting my Bible reading and/or studying glimpses on my IG.

A Reminder

Why do I share? I want to continue to show you that it is quite simple to jump in and open your Bible and read and study it for yourself. 

💙Look for what the passage says about God/Jesus/Holy Spirit. 

💜Look for what the passage says about God’s Word. 

💖Look for any prayers. 

💛Look for what the passage says that you should be applying to your life. 

💚Look for what the passage says about your identity in Christ or as a child of God.

🧡Look for things you shouldn’t do.⠀⠀⠀

Leave me a comment and let me know how your Bible journey is going!

Categories
Finances

YouTube Review: One Big Happy Life (& Convos About Money)

YouTube Channel Name: One Big Happy Life

Creator(s): Tasha & Joseph

Genre: Lifestyle and Wealth Building

Website: https://onebighappylife.com

Rating: Related imageRelated imageRelated imageRelated imageRelated image

One Big Happy Life started as a lifestyle channel but has naturally turned into an amazing financial channel with so much information on wealth building.  It could be the budget geek in me, but watching the videos immediately makes me want to jump into my budget and finances.  One way this channel differs from others that I have seen is that they actually show their real numbers.  You see how much they make, how much their expenses are, and their net worth.  Tasha has an amazing story where she started as an 18-year-old single mom in the military, making less than $20,000 to now having multiple six-figure incomes in their household.  They were able to do all of this while saving money, paying off debt, taking trips, and starting a business.  If you know me, you know that on and off again, we have followed Dave Ramsey since we have been married (I even co-led the Financial Peace University groups at my previous church home).  And while I think the program is great, it doesn’t work for everyone or even every season.  People tend to lose motivation when they have been paying off debt for so long and have to sacrifice vacations and retirement savings.

Another thing that I like about Tasha and Joseph is, they are doing what works for their family by not being married.  They have specific financial goals, and they break down how much money they would be leaving on the table if they got married.  It honestly makes so much sense.  I know that isn’t the traditional thing to do, but it’s working for them, and it’s their life.  It’s something that should be discussed before you take that jump while in a committed relationship.  They present a range of topics that are important to be apart of your talks about finances including IVF, Business (growing, maintaining, budget), Combining Finances, Holidays, Food (meal planning, shopping, diets), College/Student Loans, Large Purchases (houses, cars), Job Hunting, Home (DIY, repairs, closets), etc.

I’ve been subscribed to this channel for a while, and as they release video’s, I tend to watch them.  But I decided to spend a weekend catching up on videos, and that meant going back to the beginning and just watching the videos that caught my attention.  It’s incredible to see what they have accomplished over three years.  What started as Tasha’s channel to help funnel some of her creative energy while dealing with a job that she didn’t like turned into this brand and multi six-figure business.  They have programs to show you how to launch your own business, build wealth, and creating a life that makes you happy.

My History With Money

With my focus on building healthy goals and habits this year, finances are going to be a significant part of that and is why it is my focus for January.  Some background info on me and finances:  My entire career revolved around finances and financial institutions.  From my first nonpaid job of being a bookkeeper for a family members business in high school, my first paying job in the government to me switching to working in the banking industry for my last ten years of traditional employment.  Most of the time that I was in school was going towards some type of degree in business, finance, or financial planning.  Then my job turned into more of a project management role, and I fell in love and thought that finance was no longer my calling.

If you have read my 2019 Word of the Year blog post, you will see that when I left home for my sabbatical, I handed over our budget and our bills to my husband.  As a control freak that could track down to the penny of our budget, this was major for me but also showed how burnt out I was with everything in life.  Even for a while after I returned home, I didn’t pick up that responsibility again.  How did I feel about that? I’ve learned how to let go of having to be so tightly wound up and stressed out with our money.  But I also missed it.  I missed setting financial goals, seeing our debt go down, and our savings go up.  And after a conversation with the hubby one week, we realized that this is something that we need to do together specifically as we start talking about generational wealth, our family legacy, and our future goals.  What bought this conversation about?  We have had some significant issues with some appliances at our house that were unexpected (we built four years ago). It caused us to pause and realize that our situation looks a little different from last year, and we need to adjust for that.

Read more about our finances in this Year of Healthy post.

My Takeaways

Those issues, along with watching the One Big Happy Life channel, made me pull out our original budget spreadsheet and do some updating.  Our budget spreadsheet started as an idea from a budgeting group on Facebook I was in years ago.  (I wish I remembered the original group or person who shared the budget template because it has been so helpful!)  I used that idea and then created our own spreadsheet with sections that made sense for us. We’ve always budgeted monthly, but one thing I wanted to start doing based on the channel was to create a yearly budget for us as well. With it being the beginning of a new decade, I knew this was a perfect time to develop and start working on our 2020 budget.  Not only did I create the space for each monthly budget, but I went ahead and completed each month with what we knew was coming.  Then I created our yearly budget.  I tell you, something is humbling about seeing how much you are paying one entity for the whole 12 months.  It’s one thing to see your cell phone at $200 a month, but another thing to know that you are paying $2,400 for that little thing in your pocket.

I spent about two weeks tweaking our personal spreadsheet, updating what worked, and didn’t work for us.  Adding trackers to help keep track of our spending, our payments, and our balances.  I sat down with my husband to show him the changes, and we have frequently been having conversations to make sure we are doing this together and on the same page.  Each month, as we smooth out our process, I can make changes to improve it for our situation.  For example, I realized we had a lot of subscriptions, so one month, I created a subscription section on our budget.  The most important thing this did was help me breathe more comfortably when it comes to some of the issues we have had at the house lately.  My process improvement background thankful allows me to think of how can I fix this usually, and how do I prevent this from happening again.  This means not taking for granted that we had a brand new house and adding a line item to our budget to cover home repairs yearly. Keep an eye out for future posts where I share our update spreadsheet with you!

 

Categories
Family Finances Home

Year of Healthy: January

This last quarter of 2019 was a doozy for our household. We’ve had two major appliances breakdown (one decided to go out twice) and our septic system is on the outs.  You are probably wondering, “Why is this an issue when things break?”  Well, we built our house four years ago and no way were we expecting things to start to go downhill in a major way. Let alone, all at the same time.  This has had my husband and I sitting down and figuring out what the heck we were going to do.  Because let’s be serious, no matter what others think, we aren’t rolling in dough.  My husband is active duty military and I’m a recent housewife who is trying to figure out this entrepreneural world.  With 2020 and a new decade here, it’s the best time to work on our budgets.

Been through some bad shit, I should be a sad bitch

Who woulda thought it’d turn me to a savage?

Background Info

I’ve always had a love for numbers.  I’m pretty sure it’s a love that was passed down from my grandmother to my father and then to me.  When I was 14, a family member started a business and I took on the role of bookkeeper.  I also started to help manage my family’s household budget.  I was able to get an understanding of what it took to run a home.  I learned about mortgages, credit cards, and groceries.  It may be different now but in the early 2000’s they were not teaching these things in high school.  I did discover accounting while in high school and enjoyed it so much I made it to a leadership conference for the state.  I honestly couldn’t tell you why I didn’t pursue that path.  But I did start working with finances and eventually financial institutions a week after high school.  Most of the time I was pursuing a college degree, it was connected to Finance, Financial Planning, Business or Human Services.  (I may talk about that path one day but I am honestly still trying to figure it out myself).  But when my job shifted to project management, I put finance on the backburner when it came to my dreams.

I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it
I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it

Personally, when we got married, we made the decision that I would handle the finances.  Combining our money was easy enough and paying the bills was the same.  We didn’t have any major issues.  When we planned on building our house, we knew we wanted to pay off all of our debt.  It would make it easier to get a loan and a good interest rate.  So that was our goal.  We paid off all my student loans, two car notes, and a couple of credit cards we had.  All in all, the total was over $50,000.  We then saved a bit to have a down payment (even though one wasn’t needed) and pay points (and I still don’t know if this was the best idea).  Then when we decided that I would quit my job and start a business three years later, we did the same thing.  We paid off all credit card debt we had. And while I know that debt (especially credit card debt) isn’t that great, it didn’t stop us from accumulating it each time.  We were impatient with things we wanted and used credit cards as a cushion.  Over and over again.

I don’t mean to brag, but I be like, “Put it in the bag,” yeah

When you see them racks, they stacked up like my ass, yeah

Fast forward to my Sabbatical in 2019, I was burnt out on all things including managing our household.  When I left to travel, I turned over everything to my husband.  I was being emotionally irresponsible but I was at a breaking point.  But the lesson I learned through that time was how not to spend money on things I didn’t need.  And even my idea of what I needed, changed.  It took months but I feel like I no longer cared about material things.  When I came back home, I didn’t take over the finances.  I was still very overwhelmed with life and trying to figure out my next steps.  I needed to know what my new normal would look like after being gone for five months.  That brings me to the present.  We decided instead of one of us having a hands-off approach to our finances we really need to do it together.  And this is where our goals and new routines come in.

Whoever said money can’t solve your problems

Must not have had enough money to solve ’em

They say, “Which one?” I say, “Nah, I want all of ’em”

Creating a Budget

I have a spreadsheet that I created from a Facebook post that inspired me back in 2016.  I decided to bring that back and update it.  I added new categories based on our current bills and expenses.  And thanks to a YouTube channel (review coming soon), I also added a yearly budget in addition to the monthly budget I normally do.  Having this spreadsheet alleviates me having to remember things from month to month.  Most of the due dates and amounts of our bills don’t change.  The hardest part each month for us was remembering all of those details including bills that didn’t happen monthly but we still needed to plan for.  Not to mention some type of savings to handle incidentals, goals, and wants.  Having a budget allows us to plan for our future and then follow that plan.

Buy myself all of my favorite things 

Initial Conversation About Goals

While I created our spreadsheet, I needed to make sure Chris was apart of creating it.  Which was helpful because I forgot things, he remembered.  I remembered things, that he forgot.  We also talked about what our goals were and realized they were just a tad bit different (after almost ten years together, that happens).  He wanted to immediately pay off debt and I wanted to build a savings cushion first.  I wanted to start planning out ways to generate income without us having to go to a job every day.  He didn’t want to have to wait to buy the things he wanted.  We need to get on the same page and create our short and long term goals.  We need to break them down into monthly, yearly and lifetime goals. Then decide what actions we need to take to make those happen.

Yeah, my receipts, be lookin’ like phone numbers

Regular Conversations About the Budget

I’ve always heard that finances are one of the biggest problems when it comes to marriage.  We didn’t have that problem because we didn’t talk about it.  When we both were working this was easy because we didn’t really have to say no to anything.  If we didn’t have the cash, we put it on a card and worried about paying it off later.  When we moved to one income and had to hear no more often, it really didn’t bother us too much.  But when things started to happen with appliances in the house, we didn’t have a way to say no without it really impacting our lives.  I like washing clothes daily.  I cooked way too much not to have a working refrigerator and I liked flushing the toilet after use.  All first world problems that I have become used to.  With broken appliances, comes repair or possible replacement cost.  And with costs moving into the thousands, we need to figure out how to come up with this money and quick. Which means we need to start talking about money.  What expenses did we have that we can get rid of?  What ways can we make more money without compromising our time and other goals we set for ourselves?

You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it

I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it 

Turning Plans Into Actions

After we create our budget and then talk about it on the regular, we need to actually make sure we are hitting our goals.  There are two ways to eliminate debt and save money.  One way is to decrease spending and the other is to increase income.  There are many financial gurus out there who advocate for one way or the other.  I plan on doing a bunch of research to find what are some of the best ways for us to do one or the other or both.  We also will start to include our finances in our prayers.  I know for me, I sometimes don’t want to bother God with those types of things.  Outside of praying to hit the lottery, I don’t talk to God about helping me come up with the money for an unexpected expense.  And that has to change.  I’ve seen God do some amazing things and my faith in Him needs to extend into all areas of my life including our finances.

I’d rather spoil all my friends with my riches

Think retail therapy my new addiction

Let’s Do This

Like previous months, keep an eye out on my stories on Instagram and Facebook to see how we plan on doing all of this.  I’ll share books, podcasts, and YouTube channels that I am diving into.  I’ll even share my spreadsheet.  Two major holidays just passed in December for us.  My birthday and Christmas.  Christmas is a major spending holiday and for the past two years, we have been able to avoid making purchases the focus.  Truthfully, my greatest gift would be for us to find financial freedom.  So I can do without all of the crazy spending that we normally do.  It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.  Plus, we can always plan for next year.

Enjoyed the quotes throughout this post?  Check out 7 Rings by Ariana Grande. Let’s continue the conversation in the comments below!

Music video by Ariana Grande performing 7 rings. © 2019 Republic Records, a Division of UMG Recordings, Inc.

Categories
Family

Goodbye 30, Hello 31

2019 was a bitch. I hate to say it that way, but there is just no other way. I’ve never been one to focus on milestone years as significant life-changing years or think I needed to do certain things by a certain age. But reflecting on me being 30 and I’m wondering if this is really a thing. I was so excited to turn 30. Ushered in the year with a fantastic photoshoot, surrounded by amazing people, had a great dinner with even better people, pics with Santa, drinks afterward, and the night ended with an impromptu dance party in the parking lot. I just knew 2019 was going to be my year. Then a mixture of things went wrong. Shady ass people and friendships. A separation. Lies and deception.  Being let down in a big way by my church home and family.  All leading to a depression that honestly even a year later, I haven’t been able to shake completely. My panic attacks returned. My anxiety went through the roof to the point that I wouldn’t leave my house for weeks at a time. And even when I started to make moves to do better, the depression and anxiety stayed around. The lack of motivation remained. It was suffocating, and I felt like I was drowning. Constantly.  And I feel like it all centered around a loss of identity.  I no longer fit into any of the boxes I created for myself.

I started this blog to document what I am using to help me work through all of that. I was reading more, started watching movies and tv again, listening to podcasts, music, and sermons. I was retaking time to pour into me.  And I wanted a place to share all of that because I felt like I couldn’t be alone in these feelings and needing things to help me through them.  And if I wasn’t the only one, maybe someone else could be helped by what I found helpful.  But as I mentioned before, this lack of motivation and the continued depressed state wouldn’t go away.  While I do feel like moments have gotten better, I still have some tough days.  So what does this mean for me now that I have turned 31 and in 2020?  Self-care is always going to be a significant focus.  Year of Healthy is all about taking care of me and becoming the healthiest version of myself in all areas of my life.  But I also want to make it about others.  I think that was the primary thing missing for me last year.  Because I was traveling and switching church homes, I was no longer serving in church like before.  Because I was dealing with some friendship issues, I became a crappy friend to the ones that were left.  And I still suck at consistent communication with my family.  All of that needs to change.

As I reflect on the last year of my life and even going back to previous years, I realize that I also need to focus on the good things that have happened.  I need to celebrate the moments of overcoming, the joyous occasions, the small stuff.  I’ve lost a lot of people in the last ten years that have made it abundantly clear that life is short.  People I thought I would have more time with were taken away, and in those moments, I realized that I would give all I have away to get back one second with them.  This means the moments that I currently have need to be spent focusing on people and being joyful.  I don’t want any regrets.  I want to be able to say that every moment was lived to the fullest.  Spending time harping on the negative, complaining, and just downright being selfish has done nothing for me but made me feel worst.  I understand the need to feel the emotions and acknowledge them, but I don’t have to stay there.  I always liked the quote that puts our time into money.  It talks about someone taking $10 from your bank account that has $86,400 in it and if you would throw away the $86,390 behind the $10.  The answer should always be no, right?  But that is what I do each time when I am pissed or frustrated about something that took 10 seconds to happen, and then I spend the rest of the day focused on it.  Lord, don’t let me be pissed for multiple days.  How much money am I throwing away then?

It’s time for me to take all that I have learned and do a better job of applying it.  To become a better person and to help and serve others.  To minimize my complaining and maximize my gratitude.  I will continue to document that journey here on the blog and my Instagram and Facebook pages.  I will continue to be in deep prayer about what God wants my journey to look like and ways that I can serve you here.  Thank you for rocking with me these past few months.  I pray that you are finding something that can help you.

“For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.” – Galatians 5:13 CSB

Check out some of my favorite posts from last year:

Book Review: Letters to the Church

2019 Word of the Year: Growth

2020 Word of the Year: Healthy

All 66 Books

Book Review: The 5 AM Club

Categories
All 66 Books

All 66 Books: Getting Started

Need to catch up? Read here.

Resources

While on my Sabbatical, I decided to retake a look at the resources; the ones I previously found (The Bible Project, BibleTalk.TV, and Precepts For Life) and ones that I recently discovered.  The first resource I looked into was some free classes offered by Dallas Theological Seminary.  I remembered how much I loved the overall Bible class that I took in college, so I decided to start with “Can You Trust The Bible.”  The course gives a breakdown of how we got the Bible and how it was canonized.  Then I took “How to Read the Bible Like A Seminary Professor.” I felt like it was time to dive into their classes on the books of the Bible and randomly picked Romans.  It only covered the first eight chapters, but I read those chapters while completing the course, and it was what I used to do a more in-depth study.  At this time, I also realized that if I wanted to connect with God, I needed to do a better job of reading His Word daily.  Somewhere in all my searching, I came across the fact that Psalm 119 was the longest chapter in the Bible, and it also happened to be all about God’s Word.  I started to read this chapter as part of my daily reading slowly.  The next resource, while not typical, was Letters To The Church by Francis Chan. This book was eye-opening for me.  It explained how different our churches today (specifically western churches) are from the first-century churches and what Jesus wanted.  I couldn’t tell you anything about what the church should look like because I barely made it past the Gospels when it came to reading the New Testament.

Around the same time, I found this fantastic infographic from Crossway on Thankful Homemakers Podcast that outlined the amount of time it took to read each of the books and the major sections of the Bible.  I could spend anywhere between 2 minutes and a little less than 5 hours and read whole books of the Bible. I realized that one thing the resources had in common is they made me want to jump in and read the Bible.  Full passages, whole chapters, entire books.  I no longer wanted to read one verse and then read someone else’s thoughts about that verse.  I wanted to see what the Word of God said for itself.  And this infographic made me realize that it wasn’t as daunting as I thought.  Especially if I just dive in and start reading. So I began to do just that.  I sat a goal for myself to sit and read a book of the Bible in as few sessions as possible.  And I started with the New Testament.  I wanted to know what Jesus said His church should look like.  What are things I should be doing as a Christian?

I want to be very clear; this is not my Bible study.  That is something that I do only after I read the books as a part of what I’m affectionately calling #All66Books. Reading each book in as few sittings as possible helps you grasp a better understanding of the theme of the book and how it fits into the whole narrative of the biblical story.  Which then makes it easier to know which book God may be leading you to study later.

A few things I’ve noticed:

  • The more I prioritized God’s Word, the more time He gave me for other things.
  • I do actually have time to read the Bible.
  • My vision became clear.  Things I wasn’t sure of, I was able to hear from God more clearly on.
  • I can easily recognize when someone is saying something that isn’t biblical truth.

 

The reverse is true, as well.  When I walk away from my Bible for a few days, maybe only looking at 1-2 verses, I feel like I am losing time, and I am not listening to God as well.  My days don’t flow right.  Remember in the last post when I was talking about it was the church that was teaching me how to be a “good Christian”?  By reading the Bible for myself, I learned how wrong I was in that way of thinking.  The fruit of my obedience comes from my relationship with Christ that grows the more I am reading and understanding His Word.  My prayers, my worship, my generosity, my relationships all grow from my connection to God through His Word.

But overall, I know how overwhelming and daunting it was to simply just start reading the Bible.  My first recommendation is to grab a regular Bible and read a book through.  You don’t NEED any of the additional resources to start reading the Bible.  What I found is, sometimes having all of those extra resources was actually preventing me from merely reading God’s Word.  I felt I didn’t have time. I thought it was too much work. I felt like I didn’t understand any of it.  It wasn’t until I just simply read what God’s Word said that I began to see the bigger picture. Then and only then, did I start using additional resources.  I want to share what I have found that now helps me after I have read each book.  Whether it’s me just trying to get more of the Word in my day or if I’m ready to dive a little deeper into each book.  I’ll share what I’ve tried, what stuck, and what didn’t.  There are so many resources and different ways to study the Bible.  If something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to try something else.

I hope you can join me on this journey.  Leave me a comment if you are getting started with reading the Bible and what you feel like your biggest challenges are.  Stay tuned for next week, where we jump into the book of the Bible that I read first.

*Come back to this post where I will link future post for each book/section of the Bible*

Old Testament | Genesis | Exodus | Leviticus | Numbers | Deuteronomy | Joshua | Judges | Ruth | 1st Samuel | 2nd Samuel | 1st Kings | 2nd Kings | 1st Chronicles | 2nd Chronicles | Ezra | Nehemiah | Esther | Job | Psalms | Proverbs | Ecclesiastes | Song of Songs | Isaiah | Jeremiah | Lamentations | Ezekiel | Daniel | Hosea | Joel | Amos | Obadiah | Jonah | Micah | Nahum | Habakkuk | Zephaniah | Haggai | Zechariah | Malachi

New Testament | Matthew | Mark | Luke | John | Acts | Romans | 1st Corinthians | 2nd Corinthians | Galatians | Ephesians | Philippians | Colossians | 1st Thessalonians | 2nd Thessalonians | 1st Timothy | 2nd Timothy | Titus | Philemon | Hebrews | James | 1st Peter | 2nd Peter | 1st John | 2nd John | 3rd John | Jude | Revelation

Categories
All 66 Books

All 66 Books: Background

If you follow me on social media, you may have noticed I am doing something called #All66Books.  It’s where I am taking the time to just read each book of the Bible in as few sittings as possible.  I felt led to share that journey with you, especially if you struggle with getting into the Bible.  I plan on making this a series as I have a lot to share, including the resources that helped me go deeper after I did my first run through. Let’s start with some background information.

Baby Christian

The early days of my Christian journey are kind of murky for me.  I remember going to church with my aunt when I would visit my family in North Carolina.  I remember my mom dressing my sister and me up for Easter and us driving to the church she grew up in and then having dinner with family afterward.  But it wasn’t until my senior year of high school that my mom began going to church regularly, and by default, I started to as well.  But partway through the year, I moved in with my dad, and I didn’t keep up the habit.  I don’t remember going back until after I graduated, and even then it was maybe only once or twice a month if that.  One thing that came out of my short stint at church was I bought my first Bible.  I felt like I needed one to keep up with them at church, even though I would feel embarrassed when I couldn’t find the book they wanted us to flip to.  I also tried to read it through.  I started in Genesis and gave up around Leviticus.  Throughout the next ten years, even though I wasn’t big into going to church, I would pick up my Bible, time and time again, to try and see what the big fuss was about.  But I didn’t understand it, so the habit didn’t stick.

Searching For More

Fast forward to 2016/2017, where I seriously rededicated my life to Christ and decided to find a church home. After realizing that the Bible was a story about God, I wanted to try again to read it, but I still didn’t know how.  At this time, I felt an impression that God wanted me in His Word, but I didn’t see anyone in my life doing this.  Even when I found a church home, I rarely saw people with Bibles.  Even in the church, most people relied on the scripture on the screen or their phones.  During this time, I started to take some Bible classes in college.  I felt like I needed help to read the Bible.  The classes were terrific, and they taught me some things that I wasn’t learning anywhere else.  I learned about how many books there were, how it came about, and the different parts.  It fed my need for knowledge, but I still wasn’t actually reading the Bible. At most, I was doing one or two verses a day via devotionals.

The more I was getting plugged into the church, the more I was coming into contact with people who seemed to have the same hunger for learning and wanting to read the Bible, that I did.  They didn’t know how and didn’t know where to start.  Unfortunately, at that time, our church wasn’t helping.  You see, I felt like I needed someone else to guide me through the Bible for me to understand it.  I figured since I didn’t see everyday Christians in their Bibles, maybe it wasn’t meant for us to understand it truly.  That’s what Pastors were for.  To teach us what the Bible says.  But I would go to leadership and ask questions about the Bible, and I was always told they would get back to me, and they never did.  I was a group leader at the time and asked if I could start a small group to study the Bible.  I was heartbroken when I was told no, we couldn’t study the Bible.  I did what any millennial would do.  I headed to the internet and found some resources like The Bible Project and Bible Talk.TV.  I slowly started to dive into those resources, but I felt alone, and like I couldn’t talk to anyone about what I was reading.  I felt like our leaders were pushing going to church, serving in the church, and talking about different topics that would be supported by one or two Bible verses but not actually to read the Bible itself.  So I got wrapped up in doing all of those things to be, what I thought looked like, a good Christian.

But my thirst for the Word didn’t go away.  And the more I tried to be a good Christian, the more I felt like I was failing.  I was getting all of my “how to be a good Christian” from church and still wasn’t reading the Bible for myself.  Everything felt like it was falling apart, and things were honestly not sitting well with my spirit.  I was having more questions and getting more of the runaround.  Even going to people who I thought were my wise counsel and people who I looked up to, I realized they were doing what I was doing.  They weren’t really in the Bible.  They were doing things for appearances.  They took the time to memorize the most popular Bible verses, but they couldn’t tell you anything more than that.  (I don’t want to discount the couple of people that I knew that were indeed in their Bible daily, reading and studying.  But they weren’t always in a season where they were available to help.)   I realized that this didn’t feel right and I didn’t want to go down that path.  A turning point for me was when our Senior Pastor talked about the Book of Enoch in one of his sermons, and almost everyone in my local campus opened their Bible and started looking for the passage.  Including some of the pastors.  Just in case you didn’t know (because I wouldn’t have before my class), the Book of Enoch is not in the Christian Bible.  (Full disclosure here: I see now that my old church home has developed a new approach to getting the congregation to read the Bible.  To be fair, I never thought the no I was being told came from our main campus, but the satellite location I belonged to.  I pray that all of the new programs they have launched succeed to bring the members closer to Christ and His Word.)

Time Out For A Sabbatical

At the beginning of this year, with everything going on around me, I decided to take a Sabbatical.  During that time, I knew it was time to finally dive into my Bible the way I felt like God had been instructing me for a few years now. I knew that there had to be more to being a Christian outside of going to church each week, servicing at church, and being able to quote a few of the famous Bible verses.  And I had a feeling that the Bible would help me understand what it was really about.   I sat down with God and poured out my heart’s desire for His Word and explained I was really confused.  Then I felt like I knew what God wanted me to do.  I needed to get into His Word and make it a habit. I started by doing a few YouVersion Bible Plans to try and read the Bible in a year or to focus on specific books. For the next few weeks, I found more of what appeared to be random resources.  And I honestly feel like He was guiding me with my next steps to prepare me for this journey. This series, #All66Books, is going to document that journey in hopes that if there is someone else out there that is struggling like I was, they can see all that I tried only to find that the answer was quite simple.  Just start.  Join me next week, where I talk about how I was able to do just that.

Categories
Faith Family Finances

2019 Word of the Year Update: Growth

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?