Intentional Updates

In my last post I shared about some things that I've been doing to be more intentional.  I thought in this post I would share an update on how some of those things are going.

The first is my Bullet Journal.  At this point we are three weeks in to February and I am finding my Bullet Journal invaluable.  I had some things that I wanted to keep track of as a way of creating better habits in my life.  

Some of the goals I had were:

• Drink more Water
• Read more Intentionally (outside of school)
• Listen to Podcast 1-2 times a week
• Intentional Whitespace
• Naps (yes, I often adult way too much and my body has started to let me know that)
• Eat more Salads

Water

I gave it some thought to how I would count things a success and how I would mark off my daily progress.  I found an awesome app for my phone called Waterlogged.  It's been a great way for me to track how close I come to my daily goal of 64 oz of water.  

I had a really bad habit of clicking on my Facebook app when I am bored or waiting.  As I decided to be more intentional one of the things I did was rearrange my phone apps.  In the place of the Facebook app where my finger would automatically go, I placed my Waterlogged app.  Now I think a lot about how I'm doing on my goal of water intake.  At the end of the day if I am within a few ounces of my goal I check it off as a successful day in my Habit Tracker in my Bullet Journal.  So far I have met my goal nearly every day and I'm feel much better for it!  My default is now water much more often than tea or soda.

Reading

The reading is a bit more challenging.  Some days I find myself struggling to get through my school work so when you add on caring for a toddler, who is potty training, and an 8 month old it can be trickier.  Since I draw the line at counting the ten times I read "Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now" in one night, this one is progressing slightly slower, but I have successfully finished 3 books in the last couple of weeks.  

Hollow City

Library of Souls

(Both from Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children)

and

Breathing Underwater 

by Richard Rohr

Most of these I started in January, but I finished them up this month.

Podcast

  

At the first of this month I decided to make Podcast part of my monthly Habit Tracker.

I've wanted to listen to podcast for quite a while, but always struggled with how to make that happen. Enter the realization that I can plug my phone in to the USB port in my car and let the podcast play as I am driving.  Not a surprise that I can let it play, but hey, in our family we often just plug in the phone to see how many times the toddler wants to here "Gitchee Gitchee Goo" from Phineas and Ferb.

Finally!  An adult use for the USB!

Whitespace

This was really important for me after coming back from my personal retreat.  I knew coming back I needed to take care of myself better.  Taking care of myself means that I am a much better Mommy and Wife to those who live with me every day!  I am less cranky.  I can do more around the house.  Overall, I'm just a better person!

I have definitely developed a better pattern so far this month.  

I have always enjoyed wandering through our city's art museum so I took some time after an appointment last week just to wander around the IMA (Indianapolis Museum of Art).  

Another day I visited a local nature preserve and just sat on the lake for a short period (it was crazy cold that day!).

Another day I just watched movies I enjoy because I enjoy them at home.

Whitespace looks different for everyone, but it is a way to invest in your relationship with God by doing things that bring you joy.

Naps

I know this one sounds a little crazy and lazy, but one thing I have realized is that in the time since Eden was born I have pushed myself entirely too hard.  My body was screaming for rest long before  I gave it the rest it needed.  So I decided to start listening when my body says stop.  Now do not assume that because I am tracking it that I nap every day.  I don't!  I usually do take a few naps a week though just to care for my body.

Salads

This was just another goal I made to try to introduce more balance into my diet.  I thought that focusing on salads and water at the same time made sense as an easy first step for that.  

In addition to my habit tracker I have found the Daily Log a great resource in setting broad goals for myself each day.  It give me the flexibility to do it when I am able, but gives me some things that I can focus on for the day.  Some days I check everything off.  Other days things shift to the next day.

The second thing is we started our Finance Class last weekend.

It is a three week class so we still have two weeks to go, but it has been encouraging!  We realized there are a couple of things we need to work on ASAP, but we have the beginnings of a solid foundation to build on.  It's kind of nice to know those stupid mistakes from our 20's aren't going to haunt us the rest of our adult lives!  The great thing about the timing is that we are doing this right as our tax refund is coming.  We get to start being intentional with our tax return!  That's a good feeling.

So that's how our Intentional Life is going right now!  

Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys.... Until It Is...

It's slightly annoying when other people's monkeys become your circus.... It's incredibly irritating when they turn their elephants loose on the crowd that you are in!

~Tonya Schrougham

This last week has been incredibly crazy!  Just when life felt like we were finding a normal, we get hit with a cost increase in a budget area that was not scheduled to change until the beginning of next year.  While one part of me is really happy with my initial reaction to this particular surprise with an insanely short window for adjustment and decision making (I had my worse case scenario plan together within 15 minutes of being informed of this change), I do find myself drifting into the world of worry on occasion.  I do not make decisions lightly so having the pressure to need to readjust with no warning whatsoever and less than two weeks before the cost increase hits is not exactly something I like.  

One thing I am learning during this season in life is that while I LOVE the popular meme that makes the rounds on Facebook and Pinterest:

I am beginning to notice that some people turn their elephants loose on me while I'm admiring the insanity of their monkeys....  Then comes the moment of truth.... Do I stay in their circus or is it time to exit the vicinity completely?  It seems like it should be such an easy choice!  After all... Who in their right mind stays in the path of the stampeding elephants?!  

But what happens when the elephants do not look like elephants?  What happens when the other people in the path of the stampeding elephants are relationships you value?  Relationships that have meant something to you in moments of growth?  Then the decision to leave or stay even in the stampede of insanity that only sees the scary little mouse that is actually a mere blip on the radar of life.  All of the sudden a challenge becomes the thing that throws everyone's world out of balance.  And so the elephants stampede...  Reaction to the perceived threat begins a chain reaction of choices that have impact beyond the immediate apparent "solutions" they offer.  

This particular change has me frustrated at times, mad at other times and at other moments excited at the possibilities.  I become frustrated that a short time frame has been forced on me (I'm determined not to pour money down that particular drain when the end result is the same in the long run). I become mad in other moments when all I see is yet another broken promise and the impact that has yet again on my life when I thought I had distanced myself enough from this particular person.  In the end, however, I keep coming back to the excitement at the possibilities.  

You see, I like familiarity.  I like what is comfortable.  But deep down inside I know that comfort and familiarity are not the things that make me grow.  I grow when I step outside that comfort zone and embrace the unknown.  In the end I realize that this change and decision is not much different than our decision this year to begin recycling.  The choice to recycle led to a decrease in our garbage to the extent we just in the past couple of weeks dropped our trash service opting to transport our trash ourselves as it saves us money.  As we have been looking at cutting expenses in our budget over the past couple of months we have addressed and looked at nearly every area except the area that we are now being forced to address.  With that comes a certain excitement at the possibilities... my truth... this particular change contains the potential to declutter my life emotionally as it allows me to move more fully past a painful piece of my story.  It allows me to make decisions from a less emotional place and genuinely assess what works and what does not work for our family both financially and emotionally.  In embracing the freedom of choice that comes with this change I allow myself the ability to exit the circus and leave the monkeys and elephants behind for someone else to deal with!  Will that be our family's choice?  Maybe, maybe not, but what I now have is a freedom to choose.  

And reassessing the impact of other peoples monkeys and elephants in my life is something I am discovering I need to do more often!  

In the end it really is a form of exhaling....  

Yep, that would be why these monkeys and elephants found me... 

The need for 

Exhale.

Musings on #nospendOctober

So we are past the halfway point of our #nospendOctober.  We're surviving it....  Although we did discover that due to some unexpected things we had to alter it after the first couple of weeks.  We discovered that for some crazy reason, I wasn't able to study quite the same way if I didn't have my study sessions at Starbucks.  So we decided to add that particular luxury back in.  The scramble to try to do the studying in the house all of the time was just too much.  The library didn't seem to work very well.  Crazy, right?  I think I might get distracted by all of the other books begging to be browsed there so studying becomes difficult. 

I haven't been very successful at accomplishing all of the cool little organizational and cleaning challenges that Ruth at Living Well, Spending Less put together as part of the #31DaysLWSZ challenge.  I had to give up on that after the kitchen!  While I dream of organizing Myka's room, clearing out paperwork and cleaning out the bathroom closet, alas those items will have to wait until another time.  

Another thing I discovered last week is one way I tend to take some Spiritual Whitespace for myself is to grab lunch out on my lunch break once a week and go to the park.  After about 2 weeks of not doing that, I crashed.  I got to Friday last week and wanted to disolve into tears!  We decided that this was an acceptable compromise to the dining out budget, since eating at work can be a little challenging.  

My husband is much better at this no spend thing than I am.  That said I'm pretty sure he's planning a flea market binge November 1st....  In one way I'm glad we tried it.  On the other hand I'm ready for it to be over.  I haven't started counting days, hours minutes, seconds (mainly because that's math and it gives me a headache....), but I'm ready to be done with this particular challenge.  While it has helped us reset priorities, I'm quite tired of asking the question of does spending this money violate our no spend agreement.  I'm even questioning whether it has the same impact it does for us that it does for others since I hear us saying a lot of "we'll get it when #nospendOctober is over".  

I don't think I exactly regret this trial month of no spending, but I do think I expected different results when we started.  Maybe trying it when you are in school, are actively working through some heavy "stuff" in counseling and have a 1 year old presents a different set of challenges that make it just a little more than I think I care to take on again anytime soon.  Don't get me wrong I think it's an amazing idea.  But it's difficult in different ways from what I expected.  In retrospect I think I start to see this challenge as a great way to deal with our need for things.  I think maybe part of the reason this challenge is different for us is that we don't really have the ties to material things the way we did at one time.  We like to purchase the furniture, home decor and things that make our house uniquely ours, but we were already taking the question of do we genuinely need it?  Do we have a place for it?  What do we need to get rid of if we buy it?  before taking the challenge.  I think in that respect the challenge hasn't served the purpose intended.  So while I don't see myself jumping on board to do this challenge again anytime soon after we finish this month out, one thing I have learned is about extending myself grace.

When I was the one we needed to make exceptions for I felt like a failure.  Like somehow I was the reason this wasn't going to succeed.  After my time with God on Friday though, I came away with a different perspective.  In choosing to eat out that one time a week so I could go spend my lunchtime with God, it changes that lunch hour from something inward focused to using the resources around us (even if it's Burger King) to allow God to draw us closer to Him.  Rather than grabbing food because I'm running crazy, we chose to allot resources to provide an opportunity for some Spiritual Whitespace.  Can I share that after a two week absence from the trail I like to walk on my lunch, I cried?  In the "rules" of our #nospendOctober my heart had taken a huge hit.  I was following the rules so well that I had ignored for two full weeks what my heart was begging for.  I kept pushing through trying to do the task perfectly, not letting my heart be heard.  

I think that's the danger of challenges, church programs and all of the activities we use to fill our lives.  We are so busy trying to do all of them perfectly and not fail at any of them that we miss hearing our hearts beg for what they need.  So can I ask you to join me today?  Take some time out.  Say no to the craziness of life and let yourself hear your heart.  Take more than just five minutes away from the activity and let your heart hear from God in the stillness.  Introvert, extrovert, we both need those moments of stillness for our hearts to hear our Father.

My Paradigm Shift

The paradigm has shifted and there is no going back to what was before....

We all go through periods of change.  Some moments are easier than others.  A little happier and with change that is something to celebrate.  Other moments are a little less enjoyable, but survivable.  Still others leave us devastated in their wake wondering if life can ever be alright again.  I think the latter ones are the moments when we feel that paradigm shift.   

I don't know about anyone else, but I for one am not overly fond of things that change in a way I can't recognize anymore.  It leaves me feeling off, wondering where I fit in and more often then not if it is a negative experience I find myself trying to find a way to blame myself for the fact that the change happened.  

Often lately I find myself feeling much like Frodo returning to the Shire after his journey with the ring.  He left the Shire an idealistic hobbit thinking very much that he would deliver a ring to the Elves and he would be done.  Little did he know that a long, difficult journey was before him that did not end at Rivendale, but went all the way to Mordor.  When he returns he is so changed he never really finds a way to fit into life in the Shire.  A shift had occurred and he was no longer the same hobbit that everyone remembered.  

I think that is very much how I feel at this moment in my life.  I'm a Mommy, but it's not my sole identity.  I have things I feel very passionate about, but fail to see a way to live them out.  After months of isolation I'm returning to a world where everyone's daily life has continued on, but I'm no longer a part of it.  Where does that leave me?  

I feel like God's been showing me some interesting things about where that leaves me.  It leaves me in a world where I see much better the "what was supposed to have been" rather than the "what happens now".  But I think that's ok.  It leaves me realizing that it's alright to stop pretending things are ok when they aren't.  It leaves me valuing my whitespace moments that provide the opportunity for God to speak to me.  It makes me realize that maybe the well-meaning white noise around me keeps me from hearing what God wants from me right now.  Maybe God blesses me with silence and isolation to bring me closer to Him.  

I look around me and see so many activities going on under the guise of good, Godly activity and I start to understand that we've become so busy doing for God that we've forgotten how to just be with God.  Or did we ever really know that?  Are we afraid of what God will say to us if we stop long enough to hear?  Will He ask us to do something uncomfortable?  Something we don't want to do?  

I'll pretty much guarantee that He will.  How do I know this? Because when I stopped to listen that's exactly what He asked me to do.  To stay in a situation that brings much more pain than joy.  A place that it's impossible to explain to others why I stay except for the simple explanation of God says stay.  But in staying He's asked even more.  He's asked me to stop pretending.  Stop pretending that I'm strong enough to muscle through each moment He asks me to spend there.  To stop pretending that I'm not messy.  

The reality is I'm exactly that.  I'm messy, I'm emotional, I'm not ok all the time and the truth most days I don't want to stay where God has asked me to join Him.  But that's where my paradigm shift has left me, in a place I don't feel I belong, but God says I'm there for a reason.  My paradigm shift has changed the landscape that I'm returning to like an earthquake disrupting the beautiful California countryside.  In its aftermath my home disappeared and I'm left trying to figure out the pieces that are left of that former life.  

Pieces....  My word for 2014....  It begins to make sense of my paradigm shift....  It destroyed the facade of genuine and authentic and makes me see myself differently.  It brings to my attention others that struggle with shattered pieces that belonged to what used to be their reality and in doing so leaves me feeling a little less lonely in my messiness.

White Noise

As I enter the last month of 2014 I find myself looking back over it with mixed feelings.  It's been such a roller coaster year.  I find myself marveling that the very things that filled me with hope and excitement at the start of 2013 have now become a source of immense pain, sorrow and isolation.  How does so much change from one year to the next?

2014 has become a year that while I would never change the birth of our beautiful little Myka, for the most part I struggle often with just wanting to forget the pain that is the last year.  I've had a lot of "why, God" questions this year.  Why when I've always experienced almost sickeningly good health do I have to be taken out at the knees by pregnancy?  Why does it have to impact all of my relationships in a way that leaves me feeling alone and isolated?  Why does that extreme isolation have to last another 2 months after our Princess Baby arrived?  Why do I have to continue to feel that extreme sense of aloneness even after that 2 months is up?  I'm full of why questions.

The reality is I'd love to snap my fingers and get over it.  To get on with my life the way I lived it before everything started to change, but the truth that I'm discovering is that while the answers to all of my "Why" questions aren't always apparent every so often God gives me a little glimpse at the reason.

You see, God has spent 2014 teaching me some important lessons, just like Moses had to flee to the desert to hear God, Elijah had to be separated from the noise of those around him and even Jesus, himself spent 40 days in the wilderness, I had to become separated from the busywork I was surrounded by that masked itself in relationships and church work to actually have the opportunity to hear what God was trying to tell me.

James reminds us that we are to "count it pure joy" whenever we meet with difficulties, but I think that myself like most people would like to kind of gloss over that part of Scripture.  It's much easier to read about the cancer survivor or the motivational speaker faced with the challenge of living life without arms and legs then it is to ask how that verse applies to me personally.  See, I know I'm probably not going to like the answer.

For me the answer has meant that God has had to remind me that I can't hear him when I won't slow down to listen.  When I'm caught up in the activity even of "good work", there is lots of white noise.  White noise while it's never very loud none the less drowns out beauty of silence.  This morning as I write this I'm sitting in a quiet living room before anyone else is up.  It's amazing what you hear when you stop to listen to what is going on around you.  I hear the little noises that my baby girl makes in her sleep.  I hear life starting to happen on the street outside my house as people start their morning routines or commute.  I hear the ticking of the clock that I often forget about.  I hear the creaking and settling of the house we call home.  And lets not forget the breathing of the dogs lying next to me.  In my daily life, I had become so busy running from one thing to the next that I never stopped to pay attention to the seemingly meaningless details.  The things that make up the fabric of our lives are the little things we often ignore.

I think that's what God has been using 2014 to show me.  The importance of taking those moments and just listening and being.  Whether it's with him or with the people I happen to be with, I realize that by having things taken away I value them more.  I realize that it's ok for me to give myself permission to spend an hour with someone and not look at my phone.  If I'm staring at a screen for a large portion of my time with someone, I'm creating white noise that keeps me from truly seeing what they need from me.  They don't need me distracted, they need me present.  The time that I spend with someone and how I spend it impacts how they will be a part of my life tomorrow, next week and even next month.  If I make them feel that I'm distracted and they are taking me away from more important things chances are that next time I try to spend time with them they might not be available.

I think as I try to re-acclimate to life after extreme isolation I realize the little things now.  I realize how I feel when someone I'm with is trying to carry on a conversation with another person via text while spending time with me.  I struggled for a while with how it made me feel, but now I'm seeing it as the gift it is.  Extreme isolation brings with it a higher sensitivity to how a disconnected person experiences the things that I might have never thought twice about doing before experiencing it myself.

At first I just thought of myself as broken.  Health that made it impossible for me to live a "normal" life.  Isolation when my health kept me from doing all the things I had once juggled successfully.  Now I'm starting to see it as a blessing.  God has given me the opportunity to clear my head of the white noise that we so often live our whole lives in and has allowed me to find value in whitespace and saying no to busyness while saying yes to life with purpose and being truly present in small doses rather than living in the lie that you can juggle dozens of "close" relationships successfully.  Never taking care of or truly taking time for myself to recharge and reconnect with God.  Don't get me wrong.  As my counselor reminds me, I'm coming out of this part of my life with a new identity.  One that I often don't understand completely yet and I do still have moments of mourning the "normal" life that I had at one time.  It seems like it would be much easier to go back to living in the white noise, but once you've seen the value of life stripped down there's no going back.

The Beauty of Brokenness

I started this post 3 weeks ago, coming back to it today I found myself able to finish it.  Probably a little differently then it started, but I think that demonstrates the point all the more...

I find myself contemplating the much overlooked beauty of brokenness today.  I suppose that could be because today I feel exceptionally broken and God's needed to show me how that speaks to him.

You see tomorrow I enter the 30th week of my pregnancy.  A pregnancy which honestly has been extremely difficult both physically and emotionally.  Life change is never easy, but when pregnancy, job change and a move to a house in much need of TLC come all at the same time it brings an entirely new meaning to the word overwhelmed.  Add to that the unexpected limitations that pregnancy brought to my life-style physically (making it to work each day I'm scheduled is the equivalent of making it to the top of Mount Everest!) and what should have been a time of great celebration and joy becomes more like surviving the Amazon armed with nothing, but a pocket knife.  That's caused a lot of frustration for me since I truly am excited about and look forward to meeting our Little Miss Muffet, but the struggle to survive and get things ready while not being able to handle the day to day routine of keeping a house in order and making supper often takes precedence over the excitement that I'd love so much to live in for even a few days.  As I see other expectant mom's able to continue their lives with full time job demands and still take care of the children they already have it makes me feel less than adaquate most days.  Every so often the thought crosses my mind that I can't judge my behind the scenes bloopers by the highlight reel of their life that I see, but the truth is in my brokenness I'm often guilty of doing just that.  I see all of the pieces of me that aren't good enough and don't measure up.

"The pieces of me" it's really an interesting choice of words since at the first of the year when challenged to choose a word for the year God kept bringing me back to the word  "Pieces".  Everyone around me is picking words like give, strength, fight...  Words of action or substance and I kept coming back to the word "pieces".  I didn't understand it completely, but I went with it.  It wasn't long after my word choice that we discovered we were expecting, pregnancy soon exposed the need for some job changes where my second job was concerned as stress brought on blood pressure issues and hormone changes soon meant that pushing through the difficulties became nearly impossible emotionally.  So again I start to see the pieces of me that don't measure up to other people's expectations.  The pieces that make up me that aren't ok with other people as they start to come to light.

It's interesting when you start a blog post only to come back to it 3 weeks later...  As I write now I sit in a hospital bed waiting to see if our Little Miss Muffet is going to be joining us several weeks earlier than planned.  Waiting....  It's become another of my pieces.  It seems to be one that God feels I need right now.  It's interesting though as I find myself chatting with the nurses taking care of me sometimes baby chat other times lapsing back into the chatter that was a natural part of my life in my 10 years of nursing I find that God seems to be using this time in a hospital room to give me what my favorite author, Bonnie Grey , refers to as spiritual whitespace.  He's taking this time in my life to slow me down, take away the responsibilities that feel so overwhelming at home and He's showing me how some of those pieces fit.  He's reminding me what it's like to be able to share my story with someone else while at the same time reminding me to stop and listen and rejoice in their story as well.  To hear the similarities, but recognize the differences in our stories that have intersected for this moment in time.  Considering that when faced with the idea of a hospital stay earlier in pregnancy I fought it and argued against it, I find that right now it's exactly where I need to be.  It's given God the perfect opportunity to show me the beauty that is the brokenness I've felt for so many months.  A chance for him to remind me where I have been, but at the same time to reinforce where He's leading me.  

So right now in the moment while the pieces of my beautifully broken life have me resting in a hospital bed I find myself enjoying the whitespace moments God is sending me.  Moments where Dustin and I can just rest and listen to our Little Miss Muffett's heartbeat, moments like now where her little heart tones become the white noise I go to sleep by, time spent with my own mom learning to listen to the stories and experiences I haven't always listened to well, but thankful for the time hear them again and learn what might apply to my forthcoming adventures as mommy to my Muffet.  Brokenness, pieces of me and whitespace... The one thing they share in common?  The beauty of a picture that God wants to create in each of us.