Rest & Create

As this year began and I was coming out of a season of busy where pretty much every minute had something assigned to it and there wasn't much margin for error I was so excited for the breathing room of giving space to my dreams. My words for this season are "rest" and "create." I want to be intentional about setting aside time to just rest. This doesn't mean excess sleep for me these days.... sometimes when you have a baby who is up sick all night and you finally fall asleep at 6:00 a.m. only to be woken up by the needs of your other two at 8:00 a.m. you can either stress over lack of sleep and the fact that you are exhausted or you can remember that your word is rest, and so after breakfast is made you leave the dishes, you put on a movie, and you get cozy in blankets with your babes and snuggle together until almost lunch time. This is rest for me.

And then sometimes you carve out space for rest and it looks like going into the basement, finding your leftover gallon and a half of gray paint and a paint brush and starting to paint your kitchen like you've wanted to do for years. And the painting takes you five days at a relaxed pace (and the stairwell still isn't done but that's ok because you're looking at the progress instead of what's left to do still) and you realize that giving yourself permission to rest awakens energy and creativity and sometimes you get more done than you would have if you were pushing yourself. Turns out creating is also rest for me.

So far resting has been such an amazing paradox. It is finding what makes my soul come alive and simply responding to it. It is leaving my calendar somewhat clear, not scheduling every second, and it feels like space to breathe. It is refreshing and energizing. Sometimes it looks like not worrying about what time I have to wake up, actually watching a movie and staying up until midnight (last night!) and sometimes it looks like staying on my routine to the letter, keeping all the dishes washed, the laundry done, the house picked up... It is extending grace and giving myself permission to fully live in the things that awaken my passion. Energy and fulfillment are by-products of living a life of passion. Deadlines, un-flexible schedules, and graceless-ness are passion killers for me. Not that deadlines and structure are bad things, but I can't look too far ahead or I get overwhelmed. And so as we begin this year those two words, rest and create, have guided many of my goals.

As we approached this year while I was still in my season of busy I would jokingly say that I was going to sleep the month of january, clean my house the month of february, and spend as much time with the Lord and my boys as possible, and beyond that I had no idea. Shaun and I had a really fun conversation one evening about our goals in our relationship with each other and as a family. It's been fun refining and categorizing the things I hope to do, the changes I hope to make.

Here's my rough list of goals for this year. There are more, but these are the basics.

Spiritual

Bible Study
chronological Bible reading
be optimistic, express gratitude at every opportunity

Marriage

Monthly Date Night

Continue to keep myself vulnerable
serve Shaun without expectation, out of genuine love

Family

Dinner time (boys stay at table til we're all done, talk about our days, ask to be excused, take their dishes to the sink)

Devotional time all together before bed

teach my kids the fruit of the spirit
give the boys jobs that teach them how to serve each other and our family

House

Kitchen Cabinets & walls
gallery wall in family room
paint basement office
continue progress in master bedroom
purge/re-organize/take care of what we already have
keep working toward our "dream" 

Photography

create a website 

Physical 

give running a try (starting in march)
better posture

So many of these things I have already started, some I have even finished, some I am intimidated by, some I haven't begun yet at all, but I know that I want to continue to grow as a person, and something that seems hard just because I've never done it before I might look back on someday and think it was easy. The best way to stretch yourself beyond where you are at is to do something you think is impossible or crazy. Then when you go back to normal life it suddenly seems much easier than before.