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It’s that time again…time to evaluate life and wonder where you want to be in a year’s time, a month’s time, or six months from now. This time of the year we set goals and make resolutions in an effort to make our lives better in the coming year.
Last year I decided to make my word for the year fearless and my goal no excuses. In all honesty, it went okay. I never really managed to make the no excuses part stick for longer than 24 hours and as far as being fearless…That went okay too. I was still scared out of my wits but I did make a couple of pretty big advances, so that’s good.
But by the middle of the year I had easily slipped into old habits and it took me a while to realize (and be honest with myself and others) about the damage these habits were making. I was able to make some pretty big changes but these habits are not yet mastered and probably never will be. They will most likely continue to be thorns in my side. Always reminding me of how much I need God and that I can’t do this life alone.
So for 2018 I wanted to mix things up. I wanted to create a big goal to just be better. To try day by day and not set myself up to fail if I didn’t achieve my goal in a week’s time. I took a look at some specific areas in my life that I wanted to improve in and prayed about setting manageable goals. These goals won’t be achieved overnight, but they are designed so that I’m able to chip a little bit off day by day or week by week. I am easily able to see the small amounts of progress that I am making and rejoice in that instead of beating myself up for not achieving the goals quicker.
So, after much prayer and thought and discussions I have declared 2018 the year to go All In on The Great Adventure!
For those of you that know me well this may not come as much of a surprise, you may be able to see what I did there. For those of you that are left in the dark let me explain…
I LOVE listening to music. So, any time I can relate anything in life to a song it makes me happy. This year I wanted to give everything. I wanted to quit letting important things slip through my hands because of time being wasted. I wanted to make a real effort at getting better in all areas of my life. So, when Matthew West released the single“All In” I was hooked. I loved the idea of just giving it your all. I loved that it wasn’t directed at one particular area of life but covered all areas. I don’t know that he intended this when he wrote the song but it reminds me of Colossians 3:23 which says, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men.” So, I made All In my main theme and Colossians 3:23 my main verse.
The Great Adventure part came from another favorite song of mine by Steven Curtis Chapman called “The Great Adventure”. I included this after Christmas. One of the gifts that I received was a “Great Adventure” bundle. This contained several items with some of the song lyrics printed on them. So, I included this in my theme for a couple of reasons. 1) I’ve always been a fan of Steven Curtis Chapman and I wanted to include him in some way and 2) I have the habit of living my life vicariously through the lives of others. So, choosing to view my life and the year ahead as a Great Adventure seemed like a good idea to motivate me to be living my life instead of living it vicariously through other people.
Four days into the new year I can tell you that I’m not doing this thing perfectly. I still make plenty of mistakes and excuses. But I am learning. I’m starting to recognize little areas of my life that I can make small improvements in. I’m learning that life is a process. I can’t make a goal on Sunday and wake up Monday with my issues mastered and packaged nicely in a box. Life just doesn’t work that way. And that’s okay. I’m learning to bounce back quickly after I fall instead of letting one mistake wreck the entire day. I’m also learning to give myself grace to realize that just because I’m not working a lot in one area of my life doesn’t make me lazy, sometimes I’m just working on another area…I remind myself that I’m going All In for God. Not all in on one area of my life.
What are some of your goals or words for 2018? What is something that you are hoping to achieve in this new year? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
Until next time,
Bailey Sue
