Messy Monday: Goal Setting, Sharing Burdens, and Looking Ahead

This week's Messy Monday will hopefully encourage you as we come into the holidays and begin a new year. You matter to me. That is why I write. Your heart, mind, body, needs are worth investing in. Other's have done it for me, so I write for you.

Goal Setting: I have experienced goal setting with no goals met, some goals met, and all goals met. I have learned over the years a few handy tips I will share with you:

• The 1-3-5 format has been the single most helpful strategy I have ever used. If you want a copy let me know. I learned to use it from my coach and long time dear friend Terry Gurno. 
• Set FUN goals, things that will stretch you in different ways. For example, my last remaining goal for 2018 is to buy a pair of fantastic red shoes. I am not a shoe-a-holic at all and deliberately choosing to buy shoes because I have always wanted a pair, happens to be a stretch for me. 
• Don't wait until January of the new year to set goals. NOW is the best time to not only set them, but achieve them. 

If you want help, I can help you. Most people I know that achieve their goals work hard to do it, have people alongside them helping them reminding them their uniquely crafted purpose can be accomplished by no one else, and every goal set and met makes this happen. 

Sharing Burdens: The messiness of life can make a person feel overwhelmed and overcome by feelings of inadequacy, failure, and insignificance. This can be remedied by sharing your burdens in these ways: 

• Leaning into your faith. Wherever you are in your faith journey, lean in. If your faith is in God, lean there and pray, if it is in yourself, family or friends, lean there, regardless, you can't do it alone. 
• Trusted friends who can handle you speaking out your struggle without judgement and remind you of your value.
• Collaborate with trusted resources. For us, in this season of life (sons in elementary, middle and high school), we work with school administrations, teachers, counselors, youth pastors, and others who have navigated this season ahead of us. 

Don't hold your burdens close to your chest like a hand in poker. Bluffing your way through life or knowing you hold all the cards everyone else needs is equally unhelpful to you and those around you. 

Looking ahead: The rules of horseback riding - Eyes up, shoulders back, heels down. Where you look is where you'll go. My best friend and I went riding together all the time. She rode her quarter horse and I rode her little black Welsh pony named Licorice. That little thing dumped me more than once. Sometimes it was because I was looking down, hunched over, or had my legs bunched up. Sometimes I ended up looking down as I headed face first into the street/dirt/shrubs. Life feels like that, even if you don't have far to fall. 

One of the most powerful things I learned during my years in the saddle was what happens to my body when I look forward. My core holds me upright and centered, while the rest of me settles, softens, and becomes fluid with the movements of the horse. I haven't been in the saddle in years and I still remember that feeling. I use that awareness when dealing with hard things from being in labor, writing, parenting, doing a triathlon, etc. 

Peter's Thoughts

I never know what our kids are actually hearing - what their friends are saying, what the adults are saying, etc. We have only just started talking about Christmas at our house (mainly because I'm working that day), but our focus is Thanksgiving first.

This morning, on the way to school, our youngest son, Peter started talking to me about something that was bugging him. I asked him to type it up in my "Notes" on my phone so I could share it.

I was pretty proud of his insight and I promise, I didn't solicit any of it. He said it, just like this:

"It's like Thanksgiving doesn't exist this year. Everyone is talking about what they are going to get for Christmas. Christmas is about giving.

Thanksgiving is about being grateful for what you have. But everyone wants more and everyone thinks Thanksgiving is not happening this year. No one talks about it.

I talk about giving in Christmas - the only two reasons I like Christmas is because it is the day Jesus was born and getting to give to others."

We love our Peter-man so very much!

Messy Monday: Midnight Messy, Dressin' Up and Way Beyond Me

Happy Monday! It's late for me to be writing/posting this but I've been wrestling all week with what to say, again. I have lots of material, but I want to stick with the candid transparency I've committed to. 

Midnight Messy: I haven't been sleeping much. The wee hours have been my solace and my thought sorting window. Once everyone goes to bed, I try to get my worries to clear like a passing storm and the stillness of the midnight stars center me to release the fear I've had whirling all day. But, not so much. The tidal wave of the day's stress pours over me. This cloud formation I saw this afternoon was the perfect picture of what it feels like. Except, in it, I can't see the blue sky on the other side. I haven't quite figured out how to navigate this. For now, I pray, read and color in my Bible, and wait. 

Dressin' Up: Our guys have taken to dressing up lately. This is how they dressed for church yesterday and yes, I had to threaten them to get them to smile and play nice for the picture. They are becoming their own men. Choosing to wear ties, nice polos and do their hair. We have never been the "boys in suits and ties" kind of parents. Button ups and good jeans or khakis have been our rule of thumb from the beginning. This is what they want. We don't know exactly who they are becoming but when and where we can we work to support whatever process they are in, now. 

Way Beyond Me: I've said before, this whole parenting thing is frigging hard. 

• Shut up and let them learn from their mistakes, 
• Stay close and hear what's not being said even if the voice yelling at you (yes, that's allowed at our house - shocking for some, volume alone is not an indicator of disrespect in our opinion) is off-loading what seems like nonsense,
• Be present for their process but not control it,
• Listen with my body language - don't fold arms across chest or turn away, stay open, accessible,
• Ask hard questions and be patient if the answer is not what was expected,
• Don't make it about me - impatience and anger are BIG indicators that my discomfort outweighs whatever is going on with them,
• Know it will pass - some of it will be missed, some of it will bring a wave of relief it's over
• Make peace with not having all the answers or doing it "right". 
• SHOW UP - full attention on them, eye contact, SMILE.

I'm in the middle of learning this stuff. I am letting you in on how "Beyond Me" this feels. This song, I sing it almost every day, an anthem to my inadequacy that includes the reminder God is with me in this. WITH us. PRESENT. It's OKAY for most of life to feel like it's way Beyond Me.

Join me. Let me know what you need. We are in this life together.