What I Learned in January 2020...

1. I love my Aqua Notes.

Some of my best ideas come to me while I'm in the shower, which is unfortunate, since I have the memory power of a flea (at best). I've forgotten many a gem by the time I got out of the shower and over to some paper. Now and then, I've put a pad of paper on the shelf outside the shower - just in case - but nobody likes soggy paper. So when I opened my stocking at Christmas, I found that Ryan had discovered this brilliant product called Aqua Notes. Have you heard of it? It's a notepad of waterproof paper that hangs on the shower wall with suction cups. There's also a pencil that slides into a suction cup holder. Now when I get ideas in the shower...I can scribble them immediately and not have soggy paper!

2. Tom Hanks was a class act at the Golden Globes.
In my single days, I watched all the awards shows all the time. ALL. But I learned that Ryan isn't really a huge fan of awards shows (or beauty pageants) so I don't think I've watched a single one since we got married. I haven't really missed them, and in fact, I so rarely watch movies (on time, anyway) that I don't even know anything about what or who might be up for an award! But this month we watched the Golden Globes (where I was quite confused by the number of women who wore blazers without shirts) and as I suspected, I don't know anyone or anything anymore. But in the middle of all the confusion, I did watch Tom Hanks receive the Lifetime Achievement award, and I do know who he is, and I did appreciate his speech. He kept the main thing the main thing, showed that he cares about his craft, and honored his family. I really appreciated that. (And also...You've Got Mail? Still one of my favorites of all time.)

3. I am having fun with the One Second Everyday app.

Last year I noticed that every month, a friend of mine posted to Facebook a short video that included one second of video footage from every day of her month. It was fun to see her life scroll by in that quick, thirty(ish) second video. I decided I wanted to try it this year, so once the month is fully complete, I'll post it for you. But it was fun to see our memories scroll by a second at a time! (I will admit that some days it's challenging to find something enthralling to document!)

4. Everything at work.

I could write fourteen dozen posts and still not cover everything I have learned every single day at my temporary job. The one whose place I'm holding until she comes back from maternity leave seriously knows a hundred billion things and does them all with great poise and grace. I'll save us all some time and say I've learned so much this month - and yet there is so much more to learn. At this point I'm pretty sure I won't learn it all even by the time she comes back.

5. We are glad we left up a couple of lighted trees.

For the first time ever (in Shafferland) we left up a couple of our smaller Christmas trees for winter décor. We removed all the ornaments, but we left the lights. This has been an extraordinarily gray and gloomy month, and we have loved the extra warm and cozy lights!

6. Kobe Bryant and I were the same age.

When news broke about the helicopter crash that took Kobe Bryant's life, I learned that he and I were the same age. Everything about every death is sobering, but I don't know that I've seen my birth year displayed on a memoriam slide as often as I did in the days after his death. Everything about the entire sad situation created pause in my heart!


***

Update on my January Goals:

* Finding fresh consistency in working out: Boom! I did it! It was, at times, painful and not pretty at all, but I ran my cutely-named 5K runs every Wednesday, I did my progressively increasing exercises six days a week, and I did my Sunday stretching (which felt so so good). I did miss two workout days - the two days I had women's ministry meetings after a full day of work and was just gone too long to work out. I was sore much of the month, and some of the runs made me feel sick, but I got them done! And while I'm choosing not to focus on pounds or inches this year, I feel better in my body than I did on January 1. That's a win in my book.

* Study in Psalms each day: Yes! I am learning things I never anticipated learning! The commentary I'm using to supplement my study is great about teaching me the backstory to some of the Psalms, and to be able to reaad them in context of what was happening to the writer at the time makes them even richer! I'm taking it nice and slow. It's not a race through the book. I read a few verses each day and really drink them in.

* Enjoy three at-home dates. On our monthiversary, we did the indoor picnic date, in the middle of the month, we had our root beer taste test/root beer float fun, and though my recap of it is forthcoming, last night we had a copycat New York City dessert date night!

* Get a fresh haircut. I counted down to this day. I told Ryan he may have to hide the scissors. I wasn't sure I'd make it. BUT I DID! I spent three and a half hours in her chair, but I walked out with all new hair! (Okay, newly overhauled hair. It was the same hair.)

* Finish the Atlanta scrapbook. This one didn't happen - womp, womp. The only reason it didn't was because I found out partway through the month that Picaboo had an unlimited pages sale going on, so I stopped work on that book to finish the last two books of 2019 so I could order those. (They're huge books, so I wanted to get them ordered for sure.) So even though this goal was kind of a fail...I did scrapbook my little heart out! And please let the record show that because of the sale, I was able to order three books and save $350. Oh my, yes. That's worth missing a goal for!

* Archive two months of blog posts. Yes! I completed archiving January/February 2012!

* Work on Scripture memory. I wrote about the really helpful lesson my friend Judy sent to me regarding Scripture memory, and I am pleased with how I did. A lot of the verses on the memorization list for January were ones I already knew (at least somewhat) from earlier portions of life, but I was still excited to review and learn.

* Organize entry closet and foyer table. Squeaked this goal in just this week! We were able to put aside some coats, hats, and gloves we don't wear anymore (having a garage sale sometime this year) and organize what we do wear so we can access it all easily!

* Read a book. I finished up Grace Hitchcock's book  The Gray Chamber in the first half of the month and thoroughly enjoyed it. I wanted to try to read a second book but it simply didn't happen. See all of the above.

I'm pleased with everything I was able to accomplish while still acclimating to full time work, restarting small group, and more! I'm calling January productive!

Dreams and Goals for February 2020

Tomorrow I'm going to tell you how I did with my January goals, as well as a handful of things I learned this month. But in the meantime, I'm working ahead toward some February goals! This year I'm choosing to take things one month at a time, rather than looking at the whole year at once! It feels much more manageable to approach it this way.

* Finish the details for my/our upcoming speaking engagements. Ryan and I are speaking in February at a Valentine's banquet, and I'm also speaking at a women's retreat in March. I want to finish ironing out all the details for those two engagements so I can be well-prepared when they arrive!

* Archive two more months of old blog posts. This was the same goal I had in January, and (spoiler alert) I did accomplish it! I had hoped to do even more than my goal, but that didn't happen. So I'll restate the goal for February, and maybe this month I can overachieve!

* Work on our closet! Oh my. It's such a disaster right now! We have some major reorganizing to do in there. (My HGTV-inspired closet remodel visions are grand, but I'm squelching them for the moment in favor of simple, old-fashioned organization.) We've been treating it like a catch-all room lately, and it's time to weed out what we don't want, organize what we want to keep, and make it pretty again! And maybe I can continue my quest for all-matching hangers.

* Finish the Atlanta scrapbook. Does that sound familiar? I guess that's a spoiler for you, too. I didn't get that one done in January, though tomorrow you'll see why, and I'm sure that will completely justify it. I also want to keep up with my current first-quarter-of-2020 album. If I can have one good afternoon, I can catch that one up to current!

* Enjoy two more at-home dates. I want to make sure I put in some good planning effort on these! I really enjoyed the first two we did, I'm looking forward to one more this week, and I don't want to lose momentum in creating purposeful time for us at home! This has been a fun start to a project for us.

* Work on vacation planning. We have some dreams and ideas for places we'd like to visit this year, and I want to begin moving those from dreams into reality! We like having a vacation to look forward to, so I want to cement some dates and begin making plans!

Those are the February dreams and goals! How about you? Anything on your wish list for February? You have a whole extra day to accomplish it this year, you know!

Food for Thought

For many years now, I've copied quotes into my journal when they hit me in particularly memorable ways. I don't want to forget the snippets of wisdom God has put in my path to help me understand a mystery or redirect my haywire thoughts.

I've been mulling over some of these words as January comes to a close, so I thought I'd share them with you. Maybe you need a bit of encouragement too!

Words from a gentleman named Allen Arnold: "You can't fully enter into a time of change if you're determined to stay the same." (Lois, are you cheering that my first one has to do with change?) Our life surely is about change right now. Much of it is unknown to us as of this day. But we do know these words to be true, so we stand with open hearts and arms, ready and waiting to receive what God has.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Tony Evans, but his wife, Lois, passed away earlier this month. (They are Priscilla Shirer's parents, if her name rings a bell with you.) Anyway, at the funeral, their son Jonathan gave a very moving eulogy, and I transcribed these words from the video I watched. These were meaningful to me as I reflected on Nita's passing (which happened almost a year ago now). Jonathan said this, born out of a prayer time he had:

"You don't understand the nature of My victory. Just because I didn't answer your prayer your way doesn't mean I haven't already answered your prayer anyway. Victory was already given to your mom. There were always only two answers. Either she was going to be healed or she was going to be healed. Either she was going to live or she was going to live. Either she was going to be with family or she was going to be with family. Either she was going to be well taken care of or she was going to be well taken are of. Victory belongs to Me."

These words from Sarah Geringer: "It's not the power of positive thinking that helps us overcome toxic thoughts. It's the power of God, revealed in His Word." It's not so much about focusing on the positive vs. the negative. It's about focusing on TRUTH.

I won't even lie. These words STILL step on my toes even today: "Don't be impatient; everything will happen in God's timing." (Susan Waters) Anyone else try to "help" God know what to do and when to do it?

And this one! "God does some of His best work when our hearts are broken." (Abbey Garl). It's definitely been true for me. That's when I tend to be quiet, listen, and remain pliable!

I hope you found a nugget for your day somewhere in that list! (And if you've found a good bit of wisdom - feel free to share it with me! I love adding to my list!)

Pictures Worth a Thousand Memories...January

I did it! 

This past weekend I ordered three scrapbooks, cashing in on one of the best sales offered by the company I scrap with - and they don't run the sale that often!. I've been knee (neck?) deep in pictures for the last week, preserving memories from the end of 2019. I'm not tired of looking at them yet! 

So today I'm going to share with you some of my favorite pictures from the month of January! Some you may have seen, and some may be new to the blog, but these have been my favorite memories of 2020 so far!

This was from our first date in 2020. I had worked hard to prepare an at-home indoor picnic date, and setting it up before Ryan got home from work was so much fun. That was a great evening, and this picture makes me smile!

I have loved our winter decorations so much, and this tree has been one of our favorite parts of it. It sits in the corner of our living room and brightens every early morning and late night. It's made for a cozy start to the year.

We had the most perfect New Year's Day! We had the day off together, we had beautiful sunshine all day, and even ran our first 5K of the year outside! I am sure it's all in our heads, but when we can begin a year in a purposeful and meaningful way, it sets an important tone!

Does your cat not give high-fives? That's too bad. You're missing out!

Earaly morning coffee date before work...that was a fun day!

We haven't seen them lately, but for a while, we had some of the most gorgeous sunrises. I savored every minute of them as I drove to work. (The best part was usually done by the time I arrived.)

The pre-haircut struggle was real. So, so real.

So was the Sunday morning when we had all the medical emergencies at church. 

Then there was the day when I looked up at lunchtime and saw Ryan standing in the doorway, latte in hand. I sure do love this man!

Am I allowed to talk about sunrises twice?

Matchy-matchy at the gym! We cracked ourselves up!

When the server at the next table dropped everything right when I took the food picture. (This picture makes me laugh more than any other one this month!)

Dreamy little sighs (From the big girl and the little one.)

Plumb tuckered out.

It's been a good month with great scrapbook fodder!

She Paints!

It's been almost a year now since a whole new phase of women's ministry began at our church. I was invited to be part of the planning team at the beginning, and then when the pastor over the ministry left last summer, I was asked to fill in as the full time leader of the ministry at large.

I have loved this chance to serve.

There are several ministry capacities that make my heart leap, and this is one of them. It's a huge task, and I take it extremely seriously, but I still love it. In fact, I miss being able to devote the time to it that I did before I had a full time job. Last week I had two days when I worked full office days and then spent the whole evening on our ministry, and those were two very long days!

Our ministry is called She, and one of the outlets of it is a craft/creative ministry named She Creates. Last fall, at our final leadership meeting of 2019, our team decided we wanted to kick off 2020 by hosting a canvas painting party open to all the women/girls of the church. We wanted to make it a fun night of fellowship where we provided snacks and supplies, and the ladies could just come and enjoy a low-stress evening. We also hoped this would give the women of the church a chance to get to know the leadership team better - and give us a chance to get to know some ladies we may not have met!

So last Monday night, after our leadership team meeting, we had a trial run as a team, painting our project and learning the fine points of this particular painting. Our teacher for the night (one of our team members) did a fantastic job, and even though we are clearly not all overly skilled in painting, I was proud of all of us for making a unique masterpiece! Here were the leadership team paintings at the end of Monday night:

Friday evening, we covered tables in our church gym, arranged nametags on canvases, distributed paint and brushes, set up two tables of snacks, and prepared to meet the women who signed up to hang out with us! We had about 50 women sign up (really great for this ministry!) and when it was all said and done, I think we had 40 show up.

Ryan even came by the church after work to help us get coffee going and make sure we had enough snacks (and didn't need an emergency grocery run) before we got started!

My favorite part of the entire night was watching these ladies have fun together. We had older women, middle aged women, young women, and girls, all mixed in that gym together. We had grandmas painting with granddaughters. Aunts painting with nieces. Moms painting with daughters. We had women I've never seen at a church extracurricular event sitting in the crowd, trying something new. We had people who had never painted before giving it a shot. Longtime friends caught up on conversations and brand new friendships formed right beside them.

I. Loved. It.

The entire night, I wove among the tables, watching, listening, and documenting, and it was so encouraging! I knew some of the ladies didn't think their paintings were masterpieces worthy of display, but even the non-artists said they had great fun and would do a night like this again without hesitation.

Here's a sampling of their work - just one of the group pictures:

After the night was done, the team worked hard to clean up, and Ryan came back to help! (He's such an amazing ministry support. I appreciate him and love him for how he shows love to me!)

I was so happy to see the women having such a great time, and I can't wait to see what other fun projects come about in the remainder of the year!

The Shafferland Shuffle

Can you believe we're headed into the final week of January?? It has been a full and rich month here in Shafferland, but I can't quite believe we're already to the end of it!

* I've already told you about last Sunday, so I won't go on and on about it here. It was our new pastor's first Sunday at our church, and we enjoyed a wonderful service! We appreciated his sermon and the music was amazing...an all around great day. We were able to be home and rest the remainder of the day, and that was a great thing, because the week ahead of us was busy!

* I worked all day Monday and then stayed around for a meeting with the leadership team for women's ministry. Here's what my desk looks like when I'm prepping for a meeting. (I ran out of desk space, actually!) We had a good meeting and at the end of it, we practiced painting a canvas for a church painting party at the end of the week. We (the leadership team) hosted the party, so we all tried our hand at the painting, so we could be helpful hosts later! I didn't get home until almost 10:00 that night - a very long day! Ryan did an amazing job of helping me out with things at home - that night and all week - to keep us afloat.

* Part of it was from being tired from Monday and part of it was just life, I'm sure, but Tuesday was one of those terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad days. Nothing major or life altering. Just a rough day. I made it through the day (not without crying) and that night, Ryan got me a 4 for 4 from Wendy's, because that is the best thing for a bad day. We canceled our plans for the evening and stayed home so I could rest and get my thoughts in order. It absolutely helped, and the rest of the week went very well.

* Wednesday night Ryan and I showed up at the gym in the same outfit. Cracked ourselves up! It was my next 5K for January, and it ended up being my best one yet in time and inside my head, too. I was so busy that evening, trying to get ready for the canvas painting party, that Ryan helped me out by making a pot of chili for us to carry us through the end of the week!

* Thursday was a busy day at work, including working on writing the women's ministry newsletter! I always love it when work includes writing! Ryan taught a gym class on Thursday, and I did my own workout at home. My workouts this month get progressively longer as the month goes along. The planks and wall sits are getting rough!

* Friday was the big canvas painting day! We had about forty ladies come to church and paint together, and they seemed to have a really great time! Ryan came at the beginning and end to help us set up and cleanup, but the leadership team did all the rest of the work, and they were so diligent! I walked 18,000 steps in boots, and by the time I got home, my feet were screaming! A huge shout-out to Ryan again for helping make this entire week go smoothly. Looking forward to a week where I can be more present with him!

* So yesterday I sat on the couch and scrapbooked alllllll day long. I am almost done with the second of three scrapbooks I'd hoped to complete this week. The third one won't get done, but that's okay! Ryan took me on a date last night! We had a gift card to Applebee's, and Ryan really wanted to enjoy the bottomless wings, so that's where we headed!

The Saturday Six

One.

We don't have stairs at our house, but I do have some dreams of adding board and batten to our foyer. (Just keep reading, Ryan...) This blogger posted about sprucing up her stairs, and I loved the way it looked!

Two. 

When Ryan's mom died, our church gave us a potted plant, and it's still alive! This may be a record for me on keeping a plant going! I found this article with a list of some of the best plants for darker spaces. (Our house isn't really dark, but it doesn't have unending natural light.) If this is your year to become a plant person, check it out!

Three.

I wanted to get a Valentine's shirt to wear to work during Valentine's Day week. Decided on this one!

Four.

There are some great tips in here for meal prep for the busy person. If you struggle with menu planning/meal prep and some of the practical aspects of how it all works, take a look!

Five.

I found this post to be convicting in a beautiful way. Sometimes discomfort is all for our own good!

Six.

Need some ideas to repurpose old t-shirts? Check it out! (I'd heard of some of these, but not others!)