July New Year's Resolutions Recap

Well, hello there! It's been awhile, hasn't it? I have been going through a lot of changes in my life lately - specifically in the last 3 weeks. So obviously, I didn't post a May or June recap about my progress towards my New Year's Resolutions, and that's because in May and June, there weren't a lot of updates to address. I fell off the weight loss bandwagon, I stopped reading and blogging about it (obviously), and I've been working the same job as I have been for the last 3 1/2 years. Boring, right?

Except let me just get real for a second.  Because I just admitted I wasn't moving forward to any of my goals during the months of May and June.  Which means I was either a) stagnating in my current position or b) digressing (moving away from my goals).  And if I'm being honest, I'm gonna have to go with option number 2.  I hardcore got off the healthy eating/exercise train and gained about 7 lbs.  I started coming home and laying in bed watching Netflix by myself, because it's so much easier than trying to be productive in my life and my marriage.  I started falling back into the old habits that defined me around last October when I realized I needed to begin making changes in my life.

Why is it so easy to go back to the "bad places" in your life when you start to progress toward the "good places"?

And because I was digressing, I began to get depressed.  Something had to change.  I'm going to be 30 this year, and I can't keep "waiting around" for my life to change in the ways I want it to - I need to start acting now.

So my goals are changing from what they were in December.  Out with the old, in with the new.

1) Lose another 20 lbs by my birthday.
2) Finish paying off all debt (besides my student loans) by the end of this year.
3) Become more efficient at my new part-time job (more about that in an upcoming post).
4) Become more spiritually mature in my marriage (this is a very vague goal right now, because I'm not quite sure what this is going to look like, but I'll keep you posted).

So there are my new goals.  I know, I know, I didn't mention anything about being a faithful blogger or writer, but right now, those things are on the back burner.  I might dabble here and there (for fun), but I have so many other more important things to focus on.

Forward & progressing,

Yours Truly

April Update on New Year's Resolutions

Below are the New Year's Resolutions I made for 2017.  Can you believe 2017 is already A THIRD OF THE WAY DONE?!  I can't believe it.  I'm turning 30 in about 5 months, but I don't wanna talk about it.  Anyway, let's get a progress update on my resolution list, shall we?

1) Lose another 50 pounds - As of this past Sunday, April 30, I have completed two months of my 3-month weight loss challenge in which I've lost about 13 pounds so far!  But I have to confess, my exercising has slacked off, so I need to get back on that.

2) Pay off all of our immediate debt - Still working on it - it's definitely a work-in-progress.  Obviously, if we're still working on it... Anyway, enough of that.  (We're hoping to have everything paid off - except for my students loans - by this time next year!)

3) Rewrite Ravensboro - Still no more progress on this.  Sadly, I haven't been bitten by the writing bug lately.  But maybe soon, I will be.

4) Finish Harkness - I really can't start on this until Ravensboro is done...  ='(

5) Journal/Blog more - I have a few more book summaries waiting to be written and posted on my blog, but I finished the Harry Potter series - yay!  Not really journalling right now, but I'll figure out some kind of plan soon.

6) Find out where I should be career-wise - This is honestly still a prayer in my heart, but when you're paying off debt, a career or job change is about the stupidest thing you could possibly do.  Am I right?  This past weekend, I went to a Beth Moore devotional weekend with my best friend, and God showed me some things to work on in my spiritual walk, so that's at the forefront of things I'm focusing on right now, and honestly, I don't feel the least bit bad about it.  At all.  So yeah.


What about you?  Did you have any New Year's Resolutions going into 2017?  How are those working out?

March Update on New Year's Resolutions

Below are the New Year's Resolutions I made for 2017.  Can you believe 2017 is already A QUARTER OF THE WAY DONE?!  I can't believe it.  I'm turning 30 in less than 7 months, but I don't wanna talk about it.  Anyway, let's get a progress update on my resolution list, shall we?

1) Lose another 50 pounds - As of this past Sunday, March 26, I have completed one month of my 3-month weight loss challenge in which I've lost about 9 pounds in 4 weeks!  Between sickness and back pain, I haven't worked out as much lately, so my exercising has slacked off, but I must have built some muscle, because I can tell I'm still burning fat.  Well, it's at more of a simmer, but still...

2) Pay off all of our immediate debt - Still chugging along!  Even though we're down to about six bills (at least when it comes to paying off debt), they're still the largest chunks, so I'm having the mentality of "slow & steady wins the race" right now.

3) Rewrite Ravensboro - Still no more progress on this.  I'm ashamed to say between work (tax season is here and I work in a tax office), working out, and otherwise being married and being choir director at my church, I haven't had much time to do much else.  Including updating Ravensboro.

4) Finish Harkness - I really can't start on this until Ravensboro is done...  ='(

5) Journal/Blog more - I have SIX more book summaries waiting to be written and posted on my blog, which is awesome, but I've started slacking on the journaling front - unless you count the food journal I'm doing for my weight loss competition.

6) Find out where I should be career-wise - I just got a raise, so I'm sticking where I'm stuck right now.  Hopefully, God will continue to lead me in His will for my career, because I still don't know what to do.  I had lunch with a friend the other day, and we were talking about careers and finding jobs doing what we're good at and love to do.  Obviously, being a writer or working in a church would be preferable, but I have also considered guidance counseling or camp counseling before.  So maybe I'll look into that...


What about you?  Did you have any New Year's Resolutions going into 2017?  How are those working out?

New Year's Resolutions - 2017

By now, we all know how bad I am at making plans AND STICKING TO THEM.

But oh well.  Plans are still fun to make.  And then, when I ACTUALLY stick to them, it's AH-mazing!

So here are my resolutions for 2017:

1) Lose another 50 pounds (this will bring me down to my high school weight - which would be awesome!  I've already lost 25 pounds since mid-October!)

2) Pay off all of our immediate debt (by immediate, I mean everything that isn't my student loans - because that will take WAYYYY longer than just one year to pay off).

3) Rewrite Ravensboro (after stepping away from the book for a year, I've realized how haphazardly it was written.  I want to tighten up the storyline, simplify it a bit, and reduce the number of characters so I can really develop one or two.)

4) Finish Harkness (I'm about halfway done - WOOT!  But I'd really like to be ALL the way done, you know what I mean?)

5) Journal/Blog more.  It's been so long since I actually journaled my life, and that's definitely a way for me to reevaluate and emote about things.  Plus, I feel like it improves my writing ability.  So there ya go.

6) Find out where I should be career-wise.  I know I'm not working where I want to be for the rest of my life; I just don't know where my niche is.

Obviously, I have way more things that I would like to do, but these are my immediate focus.  Also, in the "Journal/Blog more" category, I would like to start keeping track of books I've read and recapping them.  My friend, Hannah, has a blog strictly dedicated to this at oldoriginalthoughts.blogspot.com - you should check it out.

ANYWAY, that's enough for now!  Do YOU have any resolutions?  What are they?  Do you feel like any of mine are unreasonable?  Would any of them be hard for you to do?  Lemme know in the comments! :)

An Exercise in Letting Go

I was sitting at my desk at work on Wednesday afternoon, and I was thinking, "How do people with kids live life?  Like, I'm married and have no kids, but I still feel overwhelmed with all of the demands I face JUST FROM work, church, bills, house, and marriage - how do people survive once kids are thrown in the mix?"

It seriously baffled me.

Since Tyler and I have been married, we left Faith Baptist (the church I pretty much grew up in) and started attending Life Church.  Right away, we got involved in their music ministry - Tyler, playing the bass guitar, and me, singing in the choir and on the mic.

We've been attending & serving regularly for a year and a half (I was even promoted to choir director), but during that time, I've only led two songs on the mic, and both of them were on Wednesday nights.  This has been a struggle for me, because ever since we started attending Life Church, I've wanted to lead songs on Sunday Mornings.  The longer we've been going to that church, and the more I've felt like I've had to fight to prove myself vocally, etc., the more stressed I became.

Long story short, about a month and a half ago, a part of me woke up.  "What is the big deal with leading songs at Life Church?" a voice in my head asked me.  (Not like the Schizophrenic kind of voice, but you know what I mean.)

Let me just say - Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.  It's true.  And I decided to find avenues to use my voice that aren't a constant fight or struggle and that don't have me second-guessing my ability/gift at every turn.  So I joined Lakeland Choral Society.  And I committed to singing in the Christmas cantata at Faith Baptist this December.  And my mom and I are singing in a choral performance at the end of September.

So just when one door was closed to singing Christian contemporary music in the way I wanted, another door has swung WIDE OPEN to get back into singing classical choral music - which is something I've sorely missed!  And I know I'll be so busy with these things, I won't even have a CHANCE to miss leading music at Life Church.  And why was I so bent on doing that anyway?  For external validation of my voice?  Man, what foolishness.

Anyway, God is good.  He provides for our needs and blesses us with things that we didn't even know we wanted until it's in our lives!

So back to my initial statement - my life is busy.  My life is full.  With:

1. All of the aforementioned musical endeavors (Lkld Choral Society, FBC Christmas Cantata, and the September Choral event)
2. Writing a sequel to the novel I wrote last November (I'm almost halfway done!)
3. Being a wife & caretaker of my amazing husband (this involves cleaning, laundry, cooking, budgeting, grocery shopping - all things I've never really had to do before being married)
4. My job - of course.  Full time.  It's a lot.
5. Being the choir director at Life Church

This list is not all-inclusive, but it highlights the main things.  How would kids fit in there anywhere?  I have no idea.  I'm not saying I never want kids.  I'm just saying, they would be a huge adjustment.  But I'm ready and willing to do what God's will is - if that's to have a child in the next year, I will do it with joy.  If it's to wait a few more years, I'll do that with joy as well.  And if it's not to have any children biologically - He is Sovereign God, and I will abide by His Will.

What about you?  What is God doing in your life?  What has He blessed you with that you didn't even know you wanted until you had it?

What's New, Pussycat, Woah-oo-woah-oo-woah!

If you don't understand the title of my blog post, I feel sorry for you.

If you watched that, then you're welcome.  If you didn't, poo on you.

Anyway, back to me and what's new in my life.  I know, I know, I haven't written a blog post in ages, and I definitely haven't been keeping up with my #30DayChallenges, but I have to say, I did warn you at the beginning, and I'm much better at making plans than keeping them.  Sad, but true.

The first thing I want to say about my life is that I am back on Low Carb, Low Calorie, and I'm determined to lose at least 15 pounds by the end of this year!  I'm calling it my Pre-New Year's Resolution.  I've already lost 5 lbs just by eating less and eating healthier and drinking more water and using this great little APP called My Fitness Pal.  My immediate goal is to lose enough weight to fit back into my wedding dress (and most of my clothes!) - but my long-term goal is to be skinnier and more fit than I have ever been in my adult life, which shouldn't be too hard considering I've never really had a desire to be super fit before.

Okay, on to the next thing.  I need to get serious for a minute.  I don't usually work on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays as many of you know.  So most of the time, I'm at home by myself doing nothing in order to save money.  To be honest, it's been kind of depressing.  I don't make plans to hang out with friends, and more often than not, that just means I stay at home watching Netflix and pretending the people in the shows I'm watching are my friends (kidding, except kinda not).  And when it started, I blamed Tyler.  I blamed him for our financial shortage, I blamed him for not being wild and exciting and interesting and into all the things I'm into - in short, I blamed Tyler for not keeping me content.

And recently, I realized - IT'S NOT ANYONE'S JOB TO KEEP ME CONTENT; CONTENTMENT CAN ONLY COME FROM GOD.  Sorry I just had to All-Caps you guys in the face, but it's true.  Contentment can only come from God.  And guess what?  My prayer life during that time was virtually non-existent and the only time I read the Bible was on Sundays during the preacher's message at church.  It's a wonder I was so depressed and discontent. (sarcasm)

But then, my friend Hannah invited me to a new Bible study the women of Faith Baptist Church were beginning.  The Bible study is centered on 12 women in the Bible, and so far, I am learning SO MUCH from it - it's probably one of the best Bible studies I've ever been a part of.

Then I decided I wanted to try and read the Bible through in a year, because I've tried that a few times, and it never worked out.  However, I've never tried to read the Bible through chronologically.  So I hopped on Amazon.com and did some shopping and found the Reading God's Story: A Chronological Daily Bible.  I ordered it then and there; it arrived on Wednesday, and I'm already a few days in and loving it!

I don't want God's word or my relationship with Him to just be a checklist or a bunch of names and dates on paper, I want my faith to be a living, breathing, full-of-wonder thing.  I want to be the woman of God He created me to be.

So yeah, that's what's new in my life (the most important things anyway).  Also (sidenote), we recently got our Old Towne engagement pictures from Tyler's friend, Sara, so I'll be posting those soon.  Keep your eyes peeled!

#30DayChallenge

Guys, not to brag, but I'm a genius.

That is to say, I'm really good at coming up with these awesome plans for my life that I rarely ever follow up on.  Character flaw?  Maybe.  Okay, yeah, pretty much, but this plan I REALLY want to follow through on.

Let me start back at the beginning.  So I was watching this show on Netflix called "30 Days," and basically every episode, a person from one background/culture/belief system would spend 30 Days immersed in an opposing lifestyle.  The four episodes I watched were: a conservative Christian living with a Muslim family in a majority Muslim town, a conservative Christian veteran living with a homosexual in the Castro district in California, a health-nut mom who binge-drank four times a week to get through to her 19-year-old college-partying daughter, and an atheist living with a non-denominational Christian family.

These episodes really had me thinking.  A lot.  Mostly about how Christianity and today's culture don't mix very well, but also about how Christians don't know how to LOVE their neighbors in truth AND mercy (they're either "loving" them by unmercifully shoving the truth of scripture down their throats or "loving" them by watering down the truth or casting it aside altogether in favor of "tolerance").  So I was like, "Hey, I should create a Bible study centered around all of this and introduce it as a small group at the church I'm currently attending..."  But the more I meditated on that, I realized it would be too much of a commitment for me at this point in my life.

BUT here comes the exciting part.  I was praying all afternoon and evening for God to show me how He wanted the concept of 30 Days to impact and effect change in my life, and He woke me up at 2:00 AM this morning with the answer!

Thus, #30DayChallenge was created.  Physically, my body is a mess.  I've gained a ton of weight and developed some pretty unhealthy habits lately, and I keep getting sick and missing work as a result (not cool at all).  So something needs to be done about that.  Spiritually, I'm incredibly undisciplined.  If I could change any area of my personal spiritual walk and my relationship with my husband, it would be that we would pray together more.  Also, I've felt for a long time now that God has gifted me with the ability to write and a passion for doing so.

ALL of that to say, each month for the next 8 months, I'm taking on a #30DayChallenge to sharpen one of these areas of my life.  I'm pretty excited about all of them.  Take a look:

• May - #ExerciseChallenge (30 min./5 times a week)
• June - #WeightLossChallenge (Exercise + Healthy Eating)
• July - #DrawingChallenge (1 drawing per day - I'm pretty excited about this one)
• August - #GuitarChallenge (Learns 3 chords & 1 song per week - hopefully Tyler will help me on this one)
• September - #LoveMyHubs (Going above and beyond to show Tyler how much I love & appreciate him)
• October - #DevotionalBlog (Writing a total of 20 devotional blog posts - 5 per week)
• November - #NaNoWriMo (Yep, I'm finally going to participate - and hopefully finish writing "Camp Tandy"!)
• December - #PrayerChallenge (30 min./5 times a week)

I'm going to try and write one blog post a week to chronicle my progress, but I can't make any promises.  lol  I'm really excited to see what God shows me through this process, and hopefully I can cultivate some healthy habits that will last me for the rest of my life!

Your prayers and encouragement would be greatly appreciated during these next 8 months, and if God lays a #30DayChallenge on your heart, I encourage you to consider doing it.

So here we go!

Being Married

So I've been married for about 2 1/2 months, and it's a lot different than I expected.  I was talking to my sister-in-law about it, and I really do believe people glamourize marriage.  When I was single, I wanted to be married so I could experience constant intimacy and love from a man.  But NEWSFLASH - men are not perfect.  And they can't always fulfill the desires and expectations of women... in fact, they can be pretty bad at it. Lol  

Marriage is about sacrifice and service - CONSTANTLY.  As a single person, I only had to worry about providing for myself and meeting my own needs.  Not so anymore.  

NOW I'm constantly thinking about what to make for breakfast, lunch and dinner that my husband will actually eat; how I'm going to work a full time job, keep the apartment clean, keep the dishes clean, make sure the laundry gets done, AND stretch our meager incomes to pay our bills, buy groceries, and have money left over for things like saving, insurance, and investments... you know, for the future.  

It's exhausting.  I'm exhausted.  And it doesn't help that I've been sick 4 times in the last 2 months. 

Yeah, marriage... it's not about me or making myself happy.  It's about serving.  It's about sacrifice.  It's about denying self.  It's about forgiving.  It's about learning how to function and interact with another human being whose thoughts, interests, and priorities are often vastly different from my own.  It's about maturing.  It's so different from anything I've ever experienced before.  

Without Christ, I wouldn't survive it.  

I'm so thankful He is my anchor.