It's Not Trying, It's Training!

I learn so much week to week at my church. I attend Elevation in Matthews, NC.  I love the sermons and my family and I have grown exponentially in our faith since we began attending, now four years ago. The recent series is called The New Rules of Resolution. The lesson that I got out of it is to change the way we think about changing our lives and setting goals for ourselves. We tend to set ourselves up for failure and expect too much too fast from ourselves.  We try for a while and then give up resigning ourselves to failure. This week's sermon point was "It's not trying...it's training".  We have to realize that it's a process and the changes in our hearts are not going to happen overnight. We need to take pride in the training and just keep going. Of course this all has to do with how we sin in our daily lives and seem to fail at being the people God intended for us to be, but practically speaking the principles can be applied to every aspect of our lives. For the last few weeks I have been really looking at myself and the things I want to change. I realized I am a major procrastinator (I already knew this really) and I am letting my life pass me by without accomplishing much that I want to accomplish.

My current focus:

• changing my diet and habits so that I am a healthy, active person who can be happy with ME
• creating routines in my household that do not pursue perfection (that's a problem of mine) but keep me from getting overwhelmed, exhausted and bitter.
• making my spiritual growth a priority and carving out daily time for prayer and bible reading
• finding time to do what I enjoy and see as a way to add to my household income...happens to be sewing, but it's the first thing that suffers when life gets busy

So, since last week I have been on a mission to overhaul my routine and attempt to accomplish everything that I really want to accomplish in this life.  I recently started doing a weekly meal plan so that I know what I am eating and when. I find that taking the decision making out of the equation at the moment when I am hungry and pressed for time helps me to stick to my diet. This also helps me with my grocery list and staying within my budget because I am not buying things I don't need thinking we MIGHT fix them for dinner. I know what is for dinner and when and even plan out the side dishes. It has also helps with the household routine as I look at the meal plan a few times a day and so I have to start thinking about dinner a head of time.

I also found a Bible reading plan in a devotional that my hubby and I received for christmas. One of my goals this year is to read the bible from cover to cover. I like the way this reading plan breaks things down and then has additional daily devotionals that can be read day to day. I am making it a point to start my reading early in the morning before I eat breakfast and usually while I am waiting on my niece to be dropped off for the day. Realizing that I started trying to make a habit of reading last week only to stop it after a few days, I am on week 2 of "training" to read daily. The song from Finding Nemo keeps going through my head. "Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming." I have to keep working at creating the habit. I may not actually get through the Bible cover to cover this year but I will keep reading no matter what.

So I will just keep swimming, just keep swimming.......... and keep you filled in on my struggles and challenges as I go along.