Setting Goals for 2019

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

To be honest I am really shocked at how quickly and yet how slowly 2018 went by. The year as a whole was hard. For my family it started in a valley and it really took until about the middle of the year before we even started to climb back up to the mountain top. However, the year ended on a positive note for the most part and for that I am thankful.

I, like many others, like to take time during the last few weeks of December each year to look back and evaluate the days past while looking forward to the coming year. I look over the goals that I had set to see how well I accomplished them and pinpoint just where things went wrong in the areas that I didn’t quite hit the mark. And then, with all that in mind I set myself some goals for the coming year.

Last year my main goal and major focus was just finishing my degree….a goal which I accomplished! It seems that due to that one big area of my life requiring so much attention I didn’t really manage to focus on any other area of my life. My kids stayed fed and cared for, the house didn’t fall down, meals were cooked and eaten, and my marriage remained intact but it truly felt like for much of it I was living on autopilot just trying to get through the semesters.

This year I don’t have a big huge goal looming over my so I am excited to have the opportunity to set smaller goals that I can spread out over several areas in my life. There are five main areas that I want to focus on: my spiritual disciplines, my homemaking, my parenting, my marriage, and my health and wellness. In each of these areas I am setting a few goals. Take a look.

My Spiritual Disciplines

This is an area that I really feel like I need to stay focused on this year. Throughout my time in school I kept up with this area partly because I wanted to but a big part of it was that I was required to for school (not the best reason to be reading the Bible and praying!). Now that I don’t have someone grading me on my spiritual growth its time for me to take some responsibility for that myself. That is why when Jami Balmet from Young Wife’s Guide announced her monthly challenges and that the month of January would be focusing on spiritual disciplines I jumped on it quickly. So I am starting out my year with a Scripture reading plan I found on the YouVision Bible app and have committed to working on my Scripture memory.

My Homemaking

This is another big area for me because this is where my heart is. However, with the new season we are in I am having to readjust some of my routines and schedules. I am also having to learn to let go some of the reigns a bit and have faith that I have trained my children well.

When it comes to my routines I took some time to create a 5 week rotating cycle of meal plans. I have incorporated 3 meals plus snacks. There are also shopping lists to go with each one  of the menus. My goals for this is to grocery shop for the next week on Friday evening and do all my meal prep for the week on Saturday.  While the breakfasts and snacks stay the same all the time the lunches and dinners will change. I have also incorporated a day we get to try out a new meal (Fridays) and a day that we get all clean out the fridge to prepare for the next week (Saturday)

My next goal is to create a similar rotating chart that will be used for our weekly cleaning routines. I am planning on assigning different rooms or chores to each person and rotating it around weekly so that everyone is taking part in cleaning all of the house.  I also hope to get us back into the routine of doing one load of laundry a day to keep it up. The plan is to schedule each person a day to be their laundry day and that person will be responsible for washing, drying, folding, and putting away all their own laundry. Of course the little will have help but the big kids will be learning to do things all on their own.

My Parenting

Over the course of the last 5 years I have had to tell the kids that they would have to wait while I read this book or wrote that paper. It took a lot out of all of us. This year I plan to spend time getting to know my kids again. I want to learn what makes them tick and what drives them. I want to be more present each day teaching, training, and guiding them into the adults they are destined to be. In her book Becoming Mom Strong, Heidi St. John reminded me that we as parents are warriors and our children are the arrows we are launching out in to the battlefield. We only have one chance to launch these arrows for them to be fully effective.

My Marriage

My sweet husband and I have been married for 10 solid years but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t come with its challenges. This year I want to be intentional about how I am focusing on my relationship. I want to go on date nights doing things that we both enjoy. Our children aren’t going to be in our home forever and I don’t want us to go into “empty nesting” not knowing one another. I want us to know what makes the the other laugh, cry, smile, and frown. This year is where we start.

My Health and Wellness

One thing I tend to do is neglect myself for the sake of everyone else. This means that everyone else gets hair cuts, new clothes, and the like. This year I am going to take some time to work on me. First of all my physical health. I have already started on an exercise plan. Now that the last of the holidays are over and, as I talked about earlier, I have menus planned which will help in our eating out, I can focus on better foods and getting more water throughout the day. When it comes to my mental and emotional health and wellness this year I plan to take some time each week to do things I enjoy doing. I LOVE to craft so I am looking forward to getting out my sewing machine to create some things that we need, busting out my bead work to finish some projects that I started in 2018, and taking up a new hobby, painting. I am also making more plans to write more often!

Best Laid Plans

These are all goals that I have are simply things that my own finite heart and mind would like to see happen in some capacity. However, Proverbs 16:9 reminds me that

The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.

This reminds me that while I may have set some goals for they year and I may be planning to get a few things accomplished at the end of the day it all really comes down to me relying on God to direct my steps. While I am confident that none of the goals that I have laid out go against anything found in the pages of Scripture, what I don’t know is what it looks like for me to accomplish them. So for that I must continue to go to the Lord in prayer with my hopes and desires and then allow Him to do the rest.

Do you set any goals for 2019? What are you looking most forward to this year? Let me know in the comments.