My words for 2013

Second Sunday of 2013 and I am blogging!  Hooray for the progress and I hope I can keep it up everyday for the whole year! :)

Last year my lifegroup decided to choose 3 words for the year instead of doing New Years Resolutions.  We have continued that on again for this year.  I was not very good at keeping myself accountable to the words last year as I would have liked. It is a new year so I am giving myself a second chance and my words this year are a lot more in depth and meaningful to me. If you want to know more about the three words you can go back to my blog and look at the only one in January 2012 to see what all it entails!  Now on to 2013, my words are change, surrender, and light.  Below I will give you a verse or two that I have chosen to support my words and an explanation as to why I chose these three words.  The last two actually just came to me this morning as I was worshiping in church which is awesome!

1. Change

Verse:
 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5

Explanation:
This year I will have lots of major life changes, while they are super exciting, I am nervous about how it will all unfold.  This year I will CHANGE my last name, CHANGE my job, CHANGE my address and state, along with many other changes along the way I am sure... those are just the 3 major changes that consume my thoughts.  Throughout all my changes I am going to repeat 3 words trust, embrace, and cherish.  I want to trust that God has an amazing plan for Jeremy and I's life story together.  I want to trust that God will provide a job for me once I am in GA.  I want to embrace the changes and not get caught up (AKA stressed out) in all the details of the changes.  I want to cherish every moment with my family, my friends, my coworkers, and with Jeremy.  Just thinking about all of it overwhelms me, but I could not be more excited to see what God has in store.

2. Surrender

Verse:
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Luke 9:23
"He must become greater, I must become less." John 3:30

Explanation:
I want to SURRENDER everything in my life to Christ so that He is my everything.  So often I make excuses for why I do not do my quiet time or why I can't make that meeting or why I need to buy that one thing... the list goes on and on.  I want to stop that.  I want to SURRENDER my time, my finances, my attitude, my mind, my body, and my relationships to Christ everyday.  I want to wake up in the morning and spend time with God.  I want to give my first 10% to Him in tithe and be more mindful of my spending.  I want to have a better and more positive attitude and thoughts in my mind.  I want to live a healthy lifestyle with my eating and working out habits to maintain the body that Christ gave me.  Lastly, I want to my relationships to be intentional and centered around Christ, I want people to be uplifted and want to be around me.  Each day I am alive because Christ died and gave His life for me.  I want to SURRENDER everything at His feet so that He can be in complete control of my life.  I want to be able to let His blessings shine through me! (which leads me to my third word)

3. Light

Verse:
"Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:16

Explanation:
I want my light to shine bright for Christ.  I want it to shine through my thankfulness, my boldness, and my joyfulness.  I have had my ups and downs in life but I want the light of Christ and all that He has done to be seen by the world.  I want to be bold for Christ and share the good news with everyone that I meet.  I want to be joyful and rejoice for all that He has provided me with.  I am eternally grateful for how He has blessed and changed my life thus far. I want nothing but thankfulness and praise to come out of my mouth when I am shining the light before my fellow believers and non believers.  I want others to be encouraged and to strive to have a deeper relationship with Christ by the example that I lead with my own life.

These three words are very heavy and will require God to really change and work in my life this year.  I have already spent a lot of time thinking and praying for God to show me where my focus should be and I think that He has given me a great start :)  Please be praying for me as the year 2013 goes under way.  If there is any way for me to be praying for you please let me know so that I can be lifting that up to Christ as well.  Much love <3

Change....

Change....

2013 will be the year of major life changes for me.  I am nervous, excited, scared, thankful, and overwhelmed by all that will take place.  Below you will find my random and choppy thoughts for the night :)

• 4 yrs ago I started my job at Centennial Elementary School.  I love that place and have had a wonderful time teaching there but my time there is coming to an end. I will miss everyone dearly.  There are students and co-workers that have a special place in my heart.  I will definitely have to come back and visit once I have gone.

• 1 yr ago I started dating the man of my dreams and in 6 months I get to marry him and start our life together.  Starting our life together means that I have to get a new teaching job, sale/rent my house, move to another state, and make Oklahoma my traveling place.  I can not be more excited to get married and start my life with Jeremy but I am alittle overwhelmed with all of the changes that have to take place in order for that to happen.  As I am on the downhill slope toward our wedding day I am constantly reminded how much I need to cherish the time I have left with my family, friends, and co-workers. 

• I have decided that the hardest thing may possibly be my family.  I know that we do not get together every weekend but we get together often enough that once I am gone I will not be able to attend these dinners.  I think I have been in denial about the fact that I am not going to be just a phone call away.  It makes me realize how much I need to cherish the next 6 months with them instead of taking that time for granted. 

• Every time I drop Jeremy off at the airport or I have to come home from visiting Atlanta I am an emotional wreck.  It is extremely hard to be separated from him.  Long distance relationships are not ideal.  I am more than grateful for the time that we are able to spend together.  Even though our relationship is long distance we get the privilege of seeing each other each month even if it is only for a few days.  He is a very important part of my life and I am so excited for what our life will be like once we are married. 

• I have a strong feeling that this emotion will not go away after our marriage but it will change from being emotional about leaving Jeremy to being emotional about leaving my family.  I have known since I was a little girl that I wanted to live some place other than Oklahoma and I am extremely grateful that marrying Jeremy allows me to do so, I just never really took into consideration what that actually meant for me.  I can't imagine what it is going to be like but I trust God to take care of the details.  

• For the last week I have been contemplating what I want my words to be for 2013 and I just can't come up with three solid words.  This week I am going to be working on that and praying about it.  I know that one word will undoubtedly be change as for the other two they are still up for debate.  I have decided that the third time is the charm though and that 2013 may be the year for me to begin weekly blogging.  It is a lofty goal but I think it will help me sort through my thoughts as the journey of my life changes begin this year!  

Here's to 2013.... May it be the best year yet!

3 Words for 2012

Obviously a year later I will finally begin my blogging :)  Better late then never right! 

This has been inspired by my awesome life group leader Alex!  He wrote a blog and challenged our life group to come up with 3 words for 2012 instead of creating new years resolutions that never really stick.  I personally LOVED the idea and for the last week I have been in prayer about what I wanted my three words to be.  I finally decided my third word today, so I am ready to share them!

 *Drum roll please* 

They are Temple.Discipline.Joy

I will explain why I have chosen each of these words!  Also for each one I have assigned a verse to help remind me of their importance along the way..

Temple:
      Verse: 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?  You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies."

      My body is a temple of God and I want to start treating it that way.  With this thought I what to encompass my fitness, nutrition, and sleep goals to help create an overall healthier lifestyle. I want to be more conscious of how I treat my body in order to become more successful with honoring Christ.
Discipline:
     Verse: Proverbs 5:23 "For lack of discipline they will die, led astray by their own great folly."

      I feel like in the past I have always had good intentions but I have had that lack of discipline in my life.  For 2012 I want to be intentional with becoming disciplined in my walk with Christ, my health, and my relationships with others.

Joy:
     Verse: John 15:11 "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete."

      It is not a secret that I tend to be more of a pessimist than an optimist in most situations.  My desire is to find the joy in each in every situation through my walk with Christ.  I want my joy to be complete through Christ!  God has blessed and continues to bless me each and everyday, therefore, I should be joyful in Him and let they joy overflow from my heart into my life! 

While reading Alex's blog I was taken to another persons that I do not know and given another idea that I really LOVE to go along with picking the three words.  It was to have 12in12.   The idea behind this is each month to commit to consistently trying something new, find something that I want to be better at, or give up something to see if I can live without it.  Each month I will add a new thing to further execute and focus on my words.  At the end of each month, I will reflect on the previous thing and decide whether or not to continue it and add on the next thing or realize that it was not effective and let it go.  Here are my three things that correlate to my three words:

Temple: I will wake up 30 min earlier and go to bed 30 min earlier everyday in the month of January.

Discipline: When waking up and going to bed earlier I will consciously give that time to God to intentionally start and end my day focused on deepening my relationship with Him.

Joy: I will write down 1 experience that I was able to find joy in each day before I go to bed in order to positively reflect on my life.

If you know me then I would like to ask you to be in prayer for me as I begin this new journey for 2012!  Like I was reminded in church this morning...  "Let go of the GOOD to grab hold of the BETTER!" 

Lastly I would like to express how thankful I am that God blessed me and brought me to an amazing life group.  It has provided me with awesome friends and great encouragement as I continue to deepen my relationship with Christ!  Go God! 

Let's do this!

First time for everything...

So this is my first time to blog.  I feel like I always have so much on my mind. As a result I have created a blog to get so of it out.  I am not sure how well I am going to like it or if anyone will ever see it.  I do think it will be theraputic for me though.  I will have to compile my things together so that I can start blogging away until then Hello Blog World :)