goals Archives | Heavenly Homemakers

Thank you all for joining me in hitting the restart button this fall. It’s going to be so much fun to settle into the season together! But first, let’s chat…

Once we decide to hit the restart button on our lives, it can be way too easy to get pumped up to jump right into every single bit of every single thing we hope and dream to be and to do – all at the same time. We know changes need to be made, we greatly desire to offer the best to our families, and we’re tired of not quite hitting the mark.

Before we know it, we’ve made a vow to daily scrub our floor boards, have no less than 28 casseroles in the freezer at all times, and never, ever raise our voice to our children again. We’ve decided to get back into smaller jeans by Thursday, sleep 8.5 hours every night, and hand-craft all Christmas and birthday gifts with recycled materials. Because we feel that we can certainly accomplish all this and then some, in an effort to be everything we can possibly be for our families, we eagerly sign ourselves up for yodeling classes.

Clearly, once we all master the art of yodeling, we will have arrived. Clearly.

You know how this works right? We hit the restart button and then start restarting everything at once. Very soon, we get overwhelmed with it all, end up hating every bit of it, succeed at nothing, and hang our heads all the way to the fast food drive-thru four nights in a row.

Deciding to do too much and thinking you can actually pull it off is just…too much.

You can’t put 28 casseroles in the freezer and then sleep 8.5 hours that night so stop thinking you can. Smaller jeans aren’t the be all and end all, so stop focusing on that and simply work to nourish your body better. Nobody wants an earring holder made from a toilet paper tube, so if handcrafted recycled gifts aren’t your thing, please do not try to make it your thing.

Am I making sense? Do you know what I’m saying? (Am I the only one who dislikes being asked that?) YouknowwhatImean? Yeah, Iknowwhatyoumean. (expressed in my best yodel)

Be reasonable. You have my full permission to be very eager to make positive changes for your health and for the health of your family! I highly encourage it. But be real and be wise. Changes in our lives need to be God inspired, not self inspired. The quickest way to feel defeated is to forget the Source of our strength, and the Purpose behind our choices. Success is determined not by all we accomplish in a day, but by the peace we experience through choosing God’s best for our lives.

I’m hitting the restart button because I need it – mind, body, and soul. I look forward to learning what God plans to teach you and me during this season.

I like clean floorboards, but I like peace and joy more. I like healthy food in my freezer, but I like listening to God more. I like making handcrafted recycled gifts, but no I don’t, who am I even kidding, youknowwhatImean?

So what I’m trying to say is, do you really need to sign up for yodeling classes? Or be a part of another program? Or set 14 new goals for yourself? Or strive to be what you think everyone else thinks you should be? I haven’t scrubbed my floorboards since #*&$hc&s#* <—- dropped call static

(Can you hear me now?)

Make goals based on what God is calling you to be. Improve in areas that bless your family. Hit that restart button in an effort to glorify God. Won’t it be lovely to see what He works out in you through your open heart?

She yodels and she dresses her children in homemade matching outfits.
As if that isn’t enough, they flit, they float, and bid us all adieu in perfect four part harmony.

Unless God has clearly called you to be a yodeler, then by all means, I don’t know how to even finish that sentence. Just join me in simplicity, will you? Join me in making prayerful decisions about God’s purpose for you. Join me in hitting the restart button that offers something better for our families in the form of peace and joy.

All the rest – the healthy eating, the exercise, the organization, and the clean house – it will all fall into place.

I so totally love this platform. I love that so many of you hang out with me here each day. Thank you, my dear readers, for being such an inspiration to me and to all the others here. Here’s to a fantastic month of prayerfully hitting the restart button together!

P.S. If any of you can actually yodel, I have to know.

What will you be doing 10 years from now?

That was the question Matt and I posed to a group of young married couples who had been meeting in our home for a few weeks before Christmas. By the end of the year 2020, what do you want to be doing? Where do you want to be? What are your long range goals?

You know what happens don’t you, when you ask a thought provoking question of someone else? You have to answer it yourself. But before I could reflect on my life and set some long range goals for the next ten years, I first had to choke a little bit and work to steady my breathing. In the year 2020 our baby will be getting his drivers license. We’re likely to have three kids with college bills. Our oldest son will be 23. Good grief, he could be married by then and (gasp) I could be a grandmother!

In ten years.

It’s kind of exciting to think about. And maybe just a little bit scary. And don’t even talk to me about car insurance costs for four teenage/early twenties male drivers.

(breathe…breathe…)

Of course none of us knows exactly what God has in mind for each of us in the future. We can only dream and pray and try to listen to God’s calling the best that we can.

But here’s the deal: If we don’t dream; If we don’t seek God’s plan for our lives; If we don’t search within ourselves and find the gifts God has given us so that we can put them to good use; If we don’t humbly seek God’s direction for our future and intentionally plan to carry out His vision for our families…we’ll just all float along not accomplishing much for God’s kingdom.

Then we’ll look back on our lives ten years from now and wonder why we never got much done. We’ll wonder what happened to the last decade. We’ll wonder why life happened around us and we’re still doing the same ol’ thing we’ve always been doing without really getting anywhere.

There’s something very empowering about looking ahead and picturing yourself doing and being exactly what you aspire to do and to be. I don’t care if you’re in your twenties or eighties…we can all continue to improve our walk with God and set goals for ourselves so that we can do His will on earth as it is being done in Heaven.

That’s what we’re here to do right?

So here’s what I recommend that you do. Take some time to reflect on who God wants you to be and how He can get you to that point during the next ten years. For yourself, for your family, for your church. Write it down. Dream big. But be realistic.

Pray.

Then, break the goals down a little bit. If you want to be at X in 10 years, you’ll need to do a…b… c… in order to get there. Break down each of those objectives into workable time frames between now and 2020. Then, break those steps down into months and weeks and well…start working tomorrow to make something happen.

2020 Vision. What do you see in your future?