Vitaliy often says to learn to see where God is working in your life and catch the wave. So I’ve been doing that.

And oh, how I love to dream about things. To imagine. Seeing the awesome potential of things just kills me sometimes. Like I always want to buy something old and broken down because I see what cool potential it could have if I sanded it, repaired, glued, varnished, repainted, stenciled …

But so often, I just bought the thing and never got around to fulfilling that potential 🙂 So I’ve learned to enjoy visionary self and not have to spend that money, for example. Or keep that old thingamabob that I just know I could paintsandrepurpose….

But I’ve also learned just to take ahold of the things that are truly valuable to me, and work on the potential of those certain things. Doing the actual work is hard for me. Once the dream becomes reality, and it’s not all glittery anymore and… fooh.

However … things are worth working on.

So, this year is here!

One thing I’m doing it keeping a DID journal– just in my planner– I don’t like using a planner as an appointments/to-do thing. I’ve decided to record what I DID.

This is what I wrote on Sunday: body brushing, mask, cleaned out frig [I read about a woman who goes through her frig every Jan 1, and pitches all the old stuff, and wow, did I need to do that], what I made for lunch [reverse menu planning, because menu planning for whatever reason, causes my blood pressure to rise, so hey! record after the fact, then I have a planned menu for the next week or month!], “church gave card and cake and prayed for me” [celebrated my 41st birthday!], 1 hour of prayer walking.

From Vitaliy I am learning to love actually doing (and not just dreaming about doing) something with what I have where I am. He is the master of this. He’s a do-er. I’m the dreamer. So hey, I can learn!

Also, because of the nature of my current goals and resposibilities, I’m trying to ruthlessly shave my life down to a very few goals for the next year and a half. I realized that I have lots of time, but I don’t have matching nor endless quantities of emotional energy to do all the things I can.

So…..

Homeschooling. I don’t really look at this as a goal, but I try to create dreams and aspirations around it so that I enjoy it more. I’m also … coming to a point where I can be even a little bit honest with myself, that I don’t really enjoy most of homeschooling. I like having my kids at home. That’s about it. I don’t like being in charge of educating them. I’m 5 years into this deal, so I’m not speaking out of nowhere. And I’ve tried tons of stuff. Part of my issue is that I think I don’t make most of the work independent, which is could be by this point. Part it is one of my children who just is not going to stop suffering through school no matter what we try…. Anyway… lots of analyzation here that I won’t go in to. … We would like to put the girls in school for a year when we’re in the States if we can swing it financially. Just to try out that option, too. Homeschooling, for me, is a major energy drain, so I have to keep it front and center and keep it moving forward.

Fundraising. God has been moving here. My goal is for us to be 100% by Dec, 2017. I finally feel like I have the beliefs, support system, and a plan to make this a reality. I’m devoting a lot of my mental, time, and emotional resources to this for the next year or so. {Dear reader, we need you to pray about supporting us… }

Prayer. Every year my spiritual goals look like this 1) Bible reading 2) prayer 3) Bible memory. … The problem that has evolved is that I love Bible reading and studying, I am very experienced at it– it’s EASY for me. I’m very exercised and proficient in this discipline. So, all my time, emotions, etc, runs to that…. About 4 years ago, God starting telling me that I need to pray more. But He just cooked that idea inside me for about 4 years, and now it’s time, and He’s made a way. So I have no Bible reading plans or goals, and my goal this year is to pray for 1 hour a day. And to memorize a verse of Titus each week– to memorize the whole book. So far, I’m doing it in both Russian and English.

I have a few other smaller goals but those are the major ones.

Allelujah. Amen!