focus 2016: enough

Over the past few days I've covered my focuses of family, faith, and wellness for 2016. Today, we'll dive into my final focus: enough.

This one is fairly straightforward. Simply, I am enough, I do enough, I have enough.

It's easy to feel like you you aren't enough - not productive enough, not fun enough, not thin enough, not (whatever it is) enough. Living that way, like you are never enough, is exhausting.

I know in my heart that not enough is a lie, but in this world of edited everything, it is easy to feel like everyone else has it figured out - their hair always looks great, their outfits are on point, their kids look adorable in their coordinated outfits as they play together happily, their marriage looks easy breezy, and they seem to always be out doing so many fun things. We all fall victim to the comparison game at some point. We tell ourselves that we should do more, accomplish more, that our to-do list should have more things checked off at the end of the day. We try to keep up.

This year, I want to let go of keeping up because I am enough, I do enough.

focus 2016: wellness

This year I am focusing on: family, faith, wellness, and enough. I've shared how I plan to approach family and faith intentionally in 2016 so that bring us to wellness.

For me, wellness means feeling good and treating myself well. Here's how:

1. Moving my body.
After having two babies in the last two and a half years, my body has changed significantly with my weight and shape fluctuating during my pregnancies, nursing, and postpartum recovery. I've found that since becoming pregnant for the first time, I feel more confident in my own skin. Having carried and delivered two babies makes me feel like my body is capable of amazing things and the bumps and extra bits don't bother me like they would have before babies. 

That said, my body does not feel like my body once did. It is aging along with me. I don't have the same kind of time and energy to devote to yoga or running that I did before motherhood, when all of my free time was my own, when free time existed. And I miss that. I miss feeling as strong as I once did.

focus 2016: faith

In 2016, I've decided to pick four areas to focus on: family, faith, wellness, and enough. Yesterday, I shared how I plan to be intentional with my family and today I want to talk about faith.

My faith isn't something that I talk about a lot but it's one of the things that's been most important to me throughout my life. There are times when I'm more and less intentional with my relationship with God but it's foundational and I want to be purposeful about that relationship this year in a way that I haven't been recently.

I have always had a hard time with discernment. What is God trying to tell me? How is He trying to work in my life? How do I know if it's God telling me something or if I just hope that it is? This past fall I started feeling little tugs, little moments when I felt God's presence or saw little reminders of His will. Over and over this was happening, just very small things in the midst of the bustle of returning to work, managing two kids, and trying to keep my sanity. This was the first time where I really felt that all of these small things were definitely God trying to remind me that He is there and that He needs to be at the core of everything I do. 

At the same time, we have been teaching Elia about God, Jesus, and the Bible and teaching her to pray. Praying aloud has always been uncomfortable for me but as we've been teaching her to pray, I've become more comfortable and consistent with my prayers. It's humbling to see what God can teach us through our children.

This year, I'm really looking forward to continuing this journey of spiritual growth and am planning to use the following resources to help me:

focus 2016: family

In 2016, I've decided to pick four areas to focus on: family, faith, wellness, and enough. Today, I want to talk about how I'll be focusing on family this year.

I hope and believe that this will be the simplest thing for me to prioritize this year. Already my family is the most important thing to me, the most prominent thing in my life. With such young children, it has to be. This year, I want to be more intentional about how our family spends its time and interacts and hope to do that in the following ways:

happy new year!

Happy New Year! We had a great time ringing in 2016 with friends and celebrating Todd's birthday last night. For those who don't know, my husband is a NYE baby, doubling our reason to celebrate every December 31. (Happy birthday, Love!)

With the new year comes the anticipation and excitement of the chance to start fresh. I'm not big on resolutions but since turning 30 in October, I have found myself in a reflective mindset, thinking about things I can work on, areas where I can grow. Based on those reflections, I've decided to define intentional focuses for the coming year and specific ways by which to approach them throughout the year.

My focuses for 2016 are:

Family.
Faith.
Wellness.
Enough.

In the coming week, I'll share what I mean by each focus and how I plan to prioritize them throughout the year, including some concrete actions I'll be taking in the coming weeks.

Until then, I'd love to hear what your focus or resolutions for 2016 will be, please feel free to share in the comments below. Here's to a wonderful 2016!

resolutions and a recap

It's hard to believe that almost three weeks have past since Christmas.  Elia's first Christmas was a wonderful one, filled with quality time spent together as a family and lots of joy.

Elia made a few resolutions for 2014.  Here is her list:

1. Learn to crawl forward.  (She's got backwards down.)
2. Go swimming.
3. Say "mama".
4. Stand up on her own.
5. Learn to walk.
6. Eat more solid foods.
7. Have a birthday party.

She's already making progress towards a few of her goal.  Today was her first swim lesson.  She absolutely loved it and is quite the water baby.  Goal #2, complete!

She also decided to work on #4 today.

She'll be standing on her own in no time.  And the, watch out world - walking will be just around the corner, it seems.

I hope everyone's New Year is beginning with all good things.  Cheers!