Keeping My Resolutions From Going Awry

I haven't ever been big on resolutions, maybe it's because I don't have the confidence that I can keep them. At the start of the year I kind of had in my mind a few things that I really wanted to work on. The Girl Talk blog site had a good article on resolutions that is worth noting. The beginning of the New Year seems to be a good to time to take stock of your life and work on that which needs work. Our family had a time of recapping the year and trying to be thankful to those who have blessed us in the past year. (I'm never finished writing thank you notes.) Getting through January with resolutions in tact would seem to be big accomplishment. That's why I am writing about them today. If I put them down for others to see then maybe the accountability would be helpful.


The most important thing that I wanted to work on was how I spend my Sabbath days. We aren't legalistic in any way about what people do on the Sabbath at all, but I felt like I personally was spending way too much time working. I was using the Lord's Day as a catch all day. If I didn't get something done, I would put it off until Sunday. That meant I was doing laundry, vacuuming, getting groceries, you name it. I had stopped resting and started acting like the rest of our society. I hope to go back to doing more things like ministering to others and focusing on the time we have to worship at church. I want to play with the girls, read more and have people in our home (outside of church times). Sunday is a great day to minister like that and I hope to put aside the work part of our lives to focus more on serving God. This Sunday was particularly hard because we had such a busy week. Yesterday morning I tripped over two piles of shoes at different times and had to kick them out of the way because I didn't have time to clean them up. As I write, the shoes are still left out and I really need to clean bathrooms, but I have resolved to leave them there until I can get better focused on Who I need to focus.

Another resolution I had was to get back to walking. Walking consistently since I broke my ankle last Summer has been very difficult and it's no one's fault but my own. I have a lot of willing partners here in my own home, but I haven't gotten moving yet. I turned forty last year and I'm learning about how the body seems to change on that magical day.

One very important area of our lives I wanted to work on was school. From Thanksgiving through New Year's, homeschooling takes a huge hit. I know the girls are working and learning something, it just doesn't seem to be anything I can put down in a lesson plan book. We started back to school on Monday with a definite limp, but by Friday we had picked things up and were running along pretty smoothly. I even had the great opportunity to tell the girls how much I liked to see them working together with peacefulness. On Friday the grades didn't completely measure up to a banner week, but there was such improvement through every subject that I can say we are on our way to things being better.

There now, I have shared only a few of my major weaknesses. As I start a new Monday I can say that Sunday was much better knowing I had a focus - enjoying the day of rest. I missed my walking time again, but school starts soon.