Reflections on Dreams and Goals: February 2023

 

            It is the last day of February already, and we have had a jam-packed month! I wanted to share how I did with the goals I laid out at the beginning of the month.

ONE. Though this move could not be accused of being my best (aka prettiest) packing AT ALL, I did get the packing done, and a week ahead of schedule, at that! It was markedly harder to pack while working than it was to pack while having the free time I’ve enjoyed in previous moves, we got it done. I am thankful for how it all went, even if it wasn’t picture-perfect. I’m also thankful that the Lord provided an abundance of boxes so we could get everything packed for the move! I actually prayed for Him to multiply them in our garage so we would have enough. He must have because we did!

TWO. Another goal I had for this month was to work on a couple of personal writing projects. I didn’t get as much done on either one as I would have liked, but I feel like I have a fairly good excuse for that. I did work on both, though, and I celebrate that!

THREE. I have right around a month left before I speak at my first retreat for 2023. Even while I was preparing to move, I kept reading through my retreat sessions and feel good about where the preparation stands right now! I’ll have some finishing touches to tend to before retreat weekend, but I am thankful for how far along I am in the process right now. I’ve continued to learn from it as I prepare, which has been meaningful to me.

FOUR. You already read about it, but we did have a good and memorable Valentine’s Day! We cooked together at home (which we love doing) and exchanged gifts, too! And then we moved four days later. No biggie, right?

FIVE. We moved! You’ve read about it already, so I won’t belabor this point, but I will once again mention how grateful I am to have this behind us and the lake in front of us. It is as glorious as I thought it might be.

SIX. I completed a second week of online training in grant proposal writing. This one was far more intimidating than the first, because it was all about federal grants, and that is next-level in the world of grant proposals. I am grateful to have this second week of training behind me! (All my trainings were on Pacific time, and I’ve learned that trying to live a regular life in Eastern time while working in Pacific time is not a great fit for me.)

My goals this month were pretty all-consuming of my time, but I did squeeze in a handful of other things along the way!

·       *   I finished our tenth anniversary scrapbook, so now I am just stalking the sale page to see when I can order it.

·       *   I received a message from a friend asking about the potential of going to speak at her church for a women’s event later this year. That reminded me that in all the chaos of our changes in recent months, I’d done a very poor job updating my website with upcoming events and previous pictures. So I took an evening to get that a bit more current, and I feel much better about it now!

·       *    We hosted our friends for one final party in our Bluffton house before we move. I told Ryan later that I was proud of how far I’ve come in my hosting. To invite friends over to a partially packed and mostly undecorated house was a big step for me! To be able to put together a decent party in the middle of a move was a big step for me!

·       *   We went to see some of the kids from our church compete in a Bible quizzing meet. I was SO PROUD of them for how well they did, and it was fun to see them demonstrate all the knowledge of the Bible they have packed into their minds in the past months of study!

·       *   We managed to (mostly) keep up with our workouts and I kept up with reading (at least a little bit) every single day and stayed current with my Bible study, even with all the busyness! I finished reading Devotedly and started on my next book in my reading challenge. And a note about the workouts: we actually didn’t miss a single day until moving day. We decided to take off the week after we moved because we didn’t have any floor space in the house to work out. We got right back on track again starting yesterday.