Living (no, Loving) Life

 Good Morning Beautiful People!

I hope you have had a good week, and if you haven't had a good week, I hope you can still see good in it. Back years ago, when Robert was in high school and we had the high school kids for AWANA, they would come in full of gloom and how bad their day had been. I knew we needed to shift gears before we even started the night. We would play the "5 good things" game. I would make each of them think of 5 good things that happened that week.

I have recently started using a planner to help me find more balance in my life. It has taken me FOREVER to come up with this year's word, but I realized I have had it all along, I just wasn't paying attention. Balance IS my word. Anyway, My planner has a section at the end of each week for "Weekly Review", it asks for this week's wins- where I can actually list how many issues I have solved as well as little big things like I managed to workout at least 20 minutes every morning this week , yep, just finished 3 different workouts a few minutes ago. Another section is what made me happy. Well, I spent Monday evening with a great group of my friends. We get together every couple of months and I so cherish that time. I spent time with my friends Amy and Ella Lee last night at a PTO Bingo, where I got to see several of my other friends, feel that sense of community that I love and even came home with a big basket full of goodies. I spent time texting with my 2 BFFs from high school and making plans with them, and I pretty well finished a major project at work.  Another section is Lessons Learned. Sometimes I can sabotage my whole day by getting into unhealthy foods at 8:30 of a night and then going to bed at 9. It is hard to imagine that 20 minute can spoil progress, but it does and once I have written it down, it becomes real. And then I get a spot that asks for  How I will improve, well, duh, we are going to take care of that 20 minutes. I would prefer not to eat at all at that time, and I will try, but this week, I am going to prepare myself with some healthy yogurt and see if I can stick to that.

So, my 5 good things have come back on me, and I love it. It makes me realize, God has really given me a good life in the midst of a lot of stress, And I will tell you, there is a lot of stress. I have family members dealing with the loss of a loved one, another family member getting ready to head into treatment for cancer. A dear, close friend going through cancer treatments right now and many other things personally that are causing major stresses right now. And I have realized God gave me the ability to be the cup half full person and that I need to be that for these people too. He knows I am a prayer warrior and I take my prayer life very seriously.

As always, God seems to hand me a verse that runs through my head, I didn't even know where it was found, and it took me a while to look it up because, unlike most verses, that I had learned from KJV, this one was apparently from the NIV.

It is Psalm 16:11

You make known the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. 

THAT describes my week, and how I want every week to be. In fact, I decided I not only have a word of the year, I have a verse of the year and this is it. 

My hope for you is for you to find your good life in this week, what was those 5 good things, what did you accomplish that you took for granted, I hope you found your joy.

I picked a song today that I have fallen in love with too and I think it goes right along with this week's post. We try so hard at perfection that we, I anyway, get in the funk of pointing out what went wrong, what I failed at, instead of what I accomplished. There is no place in the Bible that says we have to go through life dwelling on the fact we aren't perfect. God wants us to have JOY!!

Besides that, yes, we should try to be the best we can, but we know we are never going to be perfect here, Jesus was the only perfect one and if there was even one other perfect person, Jesus' work would have all been for nothing. 

Anyway, here is a song from Hawk Nelson, called Live Like You're Loved.

Have an amazing day and an amazing week!