I've started to plan what I'll focus on during what could end up being a very long wait for a referral. I've got a few goals in mind and I think knowing that I'm waiting on a referral could give me an all new motivation to accomplish these goals:
1. Be Healthier!
I for sure need to lose weight for several reason: I am uncomfortable in my body, I know I'm not as healthy as I could be, I hear the Ethiopian court does not like parents with "high BMI", I want to live a long time, I want to be more active and have more energy!
2. Be more organized!
I started a project to organize and declutter my house at the beginning of summer after hearing about the book Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider. I was very motivated before it got really hot and then all those consecutive weeks of 100+ degrees made my AC free home run between 86 and 90 degrees and all motivation for cleaning and organizing was lost. The plan for the winter is to get busy and get the house organized and free of useless items. If it isn't beautiful or useful it's gone! We're planning to clean out the small room upstairs we use for storage and move my sewing/crafting stuff in there and then have a true fourth bedroom for guests and use part of the bedroom as a play room for Zeke to play with some of his larger indoor toys.
I'm also going to try and organize my time better and be more productive. I've used Tsh's "Daily Docket" the past few days and it's really helped me to organize my day and to get more done, and faster! I want to be able to have more of a schedule as Zeke gets older so I'm good and disciplined before we have to make any kinds of decisions about homeschool vs. finding a good school.
3. Get a better budget!
We're doing fine financially but we have goals that we won't be able to reach with our current budget. Over the past 6 months we've slowly made some good changes but this summer we spent a lot on home improvement and I'm feeling like maybe we lost site of the goal. I know that isn't the case really, the improvements we made were mostly necessary for the safety of Zeke to be able to play around the house (fencing in the yard), but I have a real desire to meet our financial goals. We long to be free of student loan debt, so we're planning to really focus on making that happen in the next few years. It'll be a long time before we're truly free of our education debt, but it cut it back significantly would be a huge weight off our shoulders. We're so blessed to be able to have such a wonderful life and God has provided so much for us financially that it almost seems crazy to complain, as if we don't have enough when we have so much more than enough! But I want to have more so that we can be more generous with our helping of others.
4. Making more time for family!
There are several things that need to change in order for this one to happen. Some we've already done like - we've gotten rid of our cable for several reasons: saving money, saving time, saving Zeke from unnecessary evil entering his brain. It's been such a blessing to be without that distraction!
Unfortunately as a family in ministry it seems that ministry is the biggest distraction from family time. It's really difficult since Abe has to work outside the ministry in order to support us financially. So between him working and doing ministry and me with Zeke and doing ministry - connecting the three of us to do something other than ministry seems like an impossible task. There are ways in which the ministry brings us closer together since we both work together in the same place. But sometimes working together is difficult as you begin to feel like the only topic you know how to talk about is ministry!
I've been thinking so hard about this one in thinking about adding to our family and it will be vitally important to our adopted child and to Zeke to have time with both parents to bond and to feel important and loved. Some changes have to be made to make that happen. Every time I think we might be headed in the right direction - we're getting more volunteers, we might be headed towards being able to hire staff, things are slowing down in the fall season - something else happens and we take three steps back - we lose our volunteers, our supervisors add additional responsibilities, we find more work coming out of every hiding space!
So, right now it's an adventure in figuring out what to say "Yes!" to and what to say "No." to. It seems like we're needing to pray all the time that the people around us would understand when we need to say no. And we're constantly praying that God would send more workers into this field with us!
So yeah, Those are the goals:
1. Be Healthier!
2. Be more organized!
3. Get a better budget!
4. Making more time for family!
All four of these things play together. If I get more organized with a better budget I'm going to plan meals better and eat better and be healthier - all of which will mean more time with family! Pray for us as we work towards these goals while we wait and pray for our next baby!
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