10 Days Past December

Usually I am a bit more up-to-the-minute on my New Years post with a review of the past and hope for the coming times.  2013 was put to rest none too quickly for my liking.  It was a hard and frustrating year due to the car accident and slow healing.  Glad that’s almost over!

On December 31st I pulled my journal from the bottom dresser drawer… the journal with the hot pink cloth binding and the swirly letter L with bling bling on the cover.  The journal contains my bucket list.  I usually don’t look at it but once or twice a year, so I’m pleasantly surprised when I get to highlight the completed items on the list!  In 2013 there were 2 1/2 items completed…. 1. Go on a girls road trip! CHECK!  2. Build a chicken coop and raise chickens. CHICK!  I mean CHECK!  And 1/2 of 3. See the Parthenon…. well, I did see the Parthenon.  The one in Nashville.  I didn’t even know there WAS a Parthenon in Tennessee!  It’s in far better shape than the one in Greece.  When I made the list, I meant the one in Greece, but I didn’t specify Greece…. so I half-way highlighted it with hopes of Greek Islands in my future still.

On the horizon for 2014, other than we should start getting fresh eggs come May, we have a few out of town weddings, a graduation, some missions trips and lots of excitement and hope!  I relish a fresh new year with no scribbles on the pages.

As far as resolutions go…. REZ#1: I’m going to lose the weight I gained while lying on the couch for months eating casserole after casserole that my homeschool peeps brought to feed our family! Believe me, I am SOOOO thankful for my community who surrounded us during that time!  What’s a bigger size of jeans?  Or 2?  But everyone plans to lose weight, right?

REZ#2: I am reading the Bible through again.  The Children’s Living Bible is the chosen translation again.  The best I ever did at reading the Bible through involved a plan that took weekends off.  I needed the weekends to catch up!  So I divided the number of yearly weeks by five days and then divided the number of pages in the Bible by that number.  Voila!  Brilliance!  Four and a half pages a day.  And it’s already January 10th and I’m ahead of schedule!  Oh Yeah!

REZ#3: Make a few more mind and life changing resolutions…. like spending time each day in silence, and spending time each day being artsily creative, and knitting (well, that is creative too), and spending time each day listening to good music.  “Good” by my standards, not my children’s.

What are your resolutions?  Did you make any?  Will you keep them?  Share the wealth!

2011 in Review

Early yesterday morning about 1:45 am, after bringing in the New Year with most of my family at my parent’s home, I sat on the side of my bed and pulled out my bucket list of 100 things I hope to do…. but I only have about 73 items on my list so far.  This is a common occurrence on January 1st in my life.  During my first day of the new year ritual for the past several years I have used the yellow highlighter to cross off three to four things that were accomplished that year.  This year was different.  I only highlighted one item and it was Read the Scarlet Letter.  Bigg whoopie doo.  It was sort of sad after many years of mucho highlighted crossings-off.

The year-end review was good for my soul, however.  2011 was one of the hardest years of my life.  It was a happy year, yet difficult for me adjusting to being a mother of four children.  It began with the strain of hardly being able to communicate in Spanish with our precious daughter.  After a month home, even with the language barrier, I realized I had not had a talkative seven-year-old kid in my house talking at me all day long for over seven years.  It wore me out!  I haven’t taken this many naps since I was four-years-old…. not even when I was pregnant with child number three with a four-year-old and a one-year-old running around the house.  I love having Nora here, don’t get me wrong.  For the first three months we semi coccooned, always having either Rick or I with Nora… when she was awake.  She needed the stability and the attention.  As soon as her black hair hit the pillow, we did try several escapes for date-nights, but usually I was too tired to enjoy them.

It was at Nora’s Gotcha Day (the one year celebration of her adoption) when I realized that I almost felt back to normal.  It took a blinking year!  When I mentioned this to my thoughtful and insightful husband, he quizzically asked, “Oh.  You think you’re back to normal?????”  I didn’t want to know what that meant, so I never asked.  But I felt like I had accomplished something quite monumental….. surviving the first year of adopting an older child… and not having visible bald spots on my head.  A well-meaning friend and fellow-adoptive mom told me to call her when I felt like I had wrecked our family by adopting.  Thankfully, that feeling hasn’t surfaced and I haven’t needed to make that phone call. That’s a big deal.

Even though it seems like I only read The Scarlet Letter this year, it’s not true.  For the first time in my 45 years, I read the Bible through in a year.  I’ve read the whole book before, but never in a year.  That did my heart good.  If only it had been on my bucket list.  Maybe I should add it so I can highlight it!  (I secretly do that with my daily to-do lists.)  Shhhh.

The second non-bucket list accomplishment is truly a lifestyle change that is in progress.  I gained 20 pounds with each child that came into my life… including the child that came to us through God’s gift of adoption AND the baby that didn’t make it to see the world.  Needless to say, I was not on the top of my health game at the beginning of 2011.  I’m getting closer.  Through the program Take Shape for Life, I have managed to rid my poor body of 62 pounds so far.  I can barely lift 62 pounds…. good grief!  I still have a ways to go, but I feel SO MUCH better.  No more sugar induced headaches, or deep-fried onion ring stomach aches.  No more pumpkin pie comas or entire empty bag of Cheetos guilt.  Part of the success was due to the reading of another GREAT book, Made to Crave: Satisfying your deepest desire with God not Food.  If that doesn’t smack me upside the head, I don’t know what would?  It was real life in black and white.  It was encouraging and heart changing.  It changed me in 2011.

So, Scarlet Letter aside, I’m pleased with my personal positive progress in 2011.  I have big plans for 2012… there will be many highlights this coming year…. our 25th wedding anniversary… (I know!)… our eldest graduating from highschool homeschool…. and three semi-big trips to look forward to.  But I feel the need to up the ante… to choose somehow to serve others… to reach out to hurting people around me… I haven’t figured it out yet, but that will be my resolution.  I’ll keep you posted.

My Bucket List

Tonight I pulled out a journaling book that I started in 2007… it has in it, among other gatherings of words… my Bucket List.  One hundred things I want to do in my lifetime.  It’s been at least a year since I went through the list… that only goes up to 72 at the moment.  When I accomplish a listed item I highlight it.  There were eight lines highlighted already.  Surprisingly, tonight I highlighted three items from 2009 that were accomplished. 

I read somewhere long ago that if you write down your goals your brain grasps onto them subconsciously and even if you’re not remembering them… you are drawn to accomplish them.  I’m not sure if I believed that until I was married about 14 years and came across my scrapbook from my senior year of high school.  There was a page for 1 year, 5 year and 10 year goals.  What 18-year-old has any clue what they will be doing when they are 28???  Please.  Unbelievably, all the goals that I wrote down had been successfully completed… without me remembering that I jotted them in my scrapbook in 1984. 

Back to tonight and my Bucket List.  In case you live in a cave, a movie came out a few years back called the Bucket List and the premise was about two old guys determined to live out life’s wishes before they kicked the bucket.  I never saw it.  Anywho…. I highlighted three lines on my list tonight.

#10.  Take the kids on a missions trip.  Larisa, Austin and I went to La Mision, Mexico last summer… and it was Austin’s first time seeing an impoverished city.  It changed him, as I knew it would.  My 11-year-old son still is on the list to go, but I highlighted it anyway.  I firmly believe every American kid needs to see poverty, desperate need, and the happiness that is still available in spite of living conditions.  We are so spoiled blessed.

#51. Live close to the church.  For more than 10 years we have driven 30 minutes to church.  When your kids want to get more involved… an hour round-trip is a long way.  When gas is over $3 a gallon, every little trip counts.  Little did I know that we would be changing churches in 2009 and the new one is 8 minutes away.  Glory!

#61.  Publish a book for married women.  Last September my book Learning to Laugh in the Midst of Marriage came out.  Sweet! The book was not even started when I made the list!  See…. subconsciously!

Some of my other entries include traveling to far away spots on God’s green earth that I have studied and long to see.  Others involve helping others, teaching the kids new tricks, taking an emergency truck ramp…. quit laughing… they are so tempting,  learning a few tricks myself and reaching many for God’s kingdom.  I believe 2010 will bring at least three more highlighted lines… maybe more!

Do you have a Bucket List?