2011 Goals Revisited: March

It's the first of the month (Happy March, everybody), and time to post an update on how I'm progressing on my New Year's Resolutions.  To be perfectly forthright, I struggled last month.  The mood in our house seemed to match the weather. The first three weeks of February were marked by little motivation, and a general listlessness.  The last week of the month, however, we all seemed to pull out of it, and I saw great progress.  I was going to give myself a 'D' across the board, but now think that's a little harsh.  Because even though I wasn't 'feeling' it, I didn't give up.  Even though I struggled, at least I struggled.  So, I give myself a 'C' for the month of February, in all areas.  Here are my reflections:

1.  Focus on Scott.
Looking back over this, I don't see a lot of things I did outwardly.  This month's progress was all in my heart.  You see, after coming out of the last season of our lives, and into this new one, I didn't really know what our relationship was supposed to 'feel' like.  The world says you can fall into two categories in marriage:  either old fogeys, or infatuated fools.  I didn't want to be a fogey, so I was trying to recreate the fool stage we experienced early in our relationship.
All month, I thought about this, struggled with it, prayed about it, and then, the last week of February, revelation came. I had been listening to Family Life Radio while doing my pilates in the afternoon, and David Jeremiah is doing a teaching right now on the Song of Solomon.  Guess what.  God DOES have a plan for marriage, and it does involve much more than an initial burst of sparks.  Listening to God's perspective has changed mine, and is therefore changing my marriage.  David Jeremiah articulates it much better than I can, so if you're interested, or need a boost, here's the link for the teaching.

2.  Focus on Sophie and Xander.
It's hard to give to your kids when you're in a constant funk.  I did home school with Sophie sporadically, and took them on a walk to the playground (the highlight for this goal).  The real work was making sure my bad moods didn't bleed over into yelling at the kids or having a short fuse with them, and continuing to give them what they needed emotionally when I didn't 'feel' like it.

3.  Focus on my family.
Well.  We took some trips to Wal Mart.

4.  Focus on my writing.
I think the key here is that I did write, even though it was a struggle.  My post count was lower than last month, but I'm proud of myself for pushing through and actually doing it!

5.  Focus on my body.
I gained back the 3 pounds from January.  This is probably because exercise was pretty sporadic, and I didn't really watch my food intake.  However, the good news is that the last week of February, I began running in the morning and doing pilates during nap time (the pilates was motivated by my desire not to miss each day's teaching on the Song of Solomon), and lost 3 pounds.  So, I'm going into March pretty much even.