Starting a new year seems to have a way of causing me to reflect on the previous year and to look ahead to different changes. When I was younger, I would always write down my New Year’s resolutions, only to fail in the first week. I think one of the reasons we so often fail so quickly is due to lack of specificity and planning. At Cedarville, one of the things my professors continually told us was when writing lesson plans you must have goals for your students that are measurable and attainable. The season of life that I’m in can sometimes be difficult to spend much time on anything that doesn’t involve caring for the boys or home, so I needed to be careful that my goals weren’t too grand! Taking that information, last year was the first year that I set out to write goals for myself that were such. I carefully made plans of how to try to attain these goals and for the most part, was able to keep them. My goals this year are similar to last year, but tweaked here and there. Here are a few in no particular order:
-Practice my flute 2 times a month (I very much miss playing, and doing so with the little ones has been difficult. Last time I tried playing for our two little guys, Wesley immediately started wailing. Practicing 2 times a month I thought would be doable.)
-Memorize the book of Philippians (Tim found a plan for memorizing Philippians, so it’ll be something we encourage one another and memorize together.)
-Read 12 books (Reading one book a month should be an attainable goal for me. I have a list of books I would like to finish this year-- some classical literature, Biblical parenting, and some to keep up my educational background. Last year my book list changed slightly, as I was introduced to new books that I thought would be more beneficial at the time. My goal is to blog about some of these books as I finish them, so you can be watching for that in the future.)
So even though this is a little bit late, Happy New Year! May we look ahead in anticipation to how the Lord will work this year!
