Oh January...

I had high hopes for January. I set all these goals and was motivated to get working. But life happens and things don’t always work out how you plan… so I’m rolling with the punches and hoping the months a head prove to be a little more productive than the first. :) 

First of all, lets get this out of the way…

Soda, I miss you. I thought I would be over you and not be craving you by now… well I’m not.  I still want you but I am staying strong.  The thought of not being able to have a fountain Sundrop with a Dairy Delight burger when I go home in June has literally brought tears to my eyes, but I will push forward and will be a better (or at least a less chemically saturated) woman for it… I hope. I appreciate that my husband has given you up during the week as an act of solidarity, but if he continues to leave you in the fridge all week until he can drink you on the weekend, you might get launched at his head… just sayin’.

Speaking of the hubs… He is worried and trying to talk me out of the no purchases of clothing or accessories for myself. He has said on multiple occasions, “I just don’t think you will be able to go ALL year without needing something for yourself.” I’m not sure if he is having flashbacks of clothing month during the fast with the same 9 articles of clothing all month, or if is fearful of me just being really grumpy about it… but he definitely has concerns. I do believe I have way more than I need in life, and 99% of my purchases are want rather than need, which is why I made the goal to begin with. I am actually really surprised how hard this one has already been. I never noticed how many things I just “picked up” because they were cute or on sale… but it has definitely made me aware of my spending habits. Target was once my long lost love, and has now become my kryptonite… it’s almost painful to walk in. I’m hoping boot cuffs and scarves are still in style next winter. :( There were a few items I didn’t think about before I made the goal.

1.)   My journey necklace chain broke they day before Christmas. I LOVE this necklace and wore it every day. It was a gift from a beautiful friend that represents the Journey of the year of fasting and the journey I’m on. I was super bummed when I realized the necklace was out. BUT… I have reminded my husband almost daily that this is what I want for Valentine’s Day… so I’m banking on that problem being solved.

2.)  Running shoes. Eric brought this to my attention, and honestly, I’m not sure what I will do yet… I’m going to let God figure it out. The problem is this: I can get 500-600 miles out of my shoes. I already had a solid 200 miles on them before the year started and I have a goal of 804 miles. I’ll let you do the math… but I’m going to need/want (haven’t decided if it is a need or a want yet) new shoes.  I’m sure God has a plan, I’ll just have to wait it out.

3.)  Sunglasses. I pay $5 for sunglasses because I lose and/or break them so often. It wasn’t even the end of January before the first pair broke. I’m currently sporting broken shades and hoping that some of the “gone missing” pairs will surface this year.  

If I were to divide up the weeks equally… how much I should be getting rid of, how much I should be running, how much of the Bible I should have read… let’s just say I am WAY behind.  I should have completed 64 miles, given away 155 things, and be half way through Exodus. I’m not. I’m not even close. So here’s to picking up the pace in February.

We are having people in our home, paying stuff down, putting money back, visiting DC attractions, Eric wrote our name down…in ink pen… for a small group at church, and even working on the friend thing. So not all areas are completely behind. :)

I’m moving along… I can see how God is teaching me things, showing me things about myself I didn’t even know I needed to take a look at, and I’m trying to embrace it.  It’s going to be a great year of learning and purging (all kinds of things… even things that aren’t “things”). Thanks for joining me on the journey!

Finding a New Normal...

Finding a New Normal…

So we’ve been here just over seven months. I’m going to be honest, I really thought I would be established, settled, and have it together by now.  Well, I’m not… and I don’t.  And you know what… for now… that’s ok. 

 

God has taught me a lot of things about myself over the last seven months. Like always, lessons are not always easy to learn, and sometimes come as a pretty bitter pill to swallow, but I am thankful for them none the less.  

Our new normal consists of things like:

-Daily encounters with Amish buggies

-“Sit down Sunday” where we FaceTime/skype grandparents

-Big classes at school

-Indoor pools

-Getting lost… a lot

-A big flat yard

-Reclining seats at the movie theaters

-Homesick children longing for friendships

-Visiting multiple churches

-Lots of beach time in the summer

-Looking forward to Monday phone calls from Missy

-A majority of conversation happening through texts

-Seeing the Washington Monument and saying “almost to Daddy’s work” (instead of the Arch)

-Holidays and Birthdays without extended family

-Searching flight deals on a weekly basis

-Random crying followed by, “I miss _____”

-Visitors in our home a lot more than in MO (love)

-Flying people here to help

-Spending 99.9% of my time with my husband and children

-Having an ABUNDANCE of wonderful, historical places to visit right here

-Writing letters

-Lots, and lots, and lots of praying

I hope we find lots of new wonderful normals, and get rid of the hard ones. Time is a wonderful healer and I have faith God is doing a mighty work in my marriage and my family. We have survived a swim season, a soccer season, birthday parties, the first day of school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s being the “new kid”.  God’s got big things planned for this family in 2015!

Every year I create a list of goals to work toward… I’ve been doing it since 2007. I usually have 12 goals, and I have never achieved more than 10 on the list… but I feel like I have things to be working toward. (I’m a make a list and cross it off kind of gal.) I spent 2013 fasting 9 different areas of my life for a month at a time. It was a game changer. I found that if I let the Lord guide me in the things I should be doing, I do much better.  In 2014 my life was kind of a whirlwind, and I didn’t set goals. So 2015… I’m back.  I found that journaling/blogging held me accountable (even if no one was reading) to the task at hand, so I think I’m going to put it out there again.  

I started praying about what goals I should set for myself the week before Thanksgiving.  There are some things on this list that I am excited about doing. There are some things I literally shed tears over because I didn’t want to do it, but I knew God wanted me to, so they are there. There are some things on this list that I thought about not sharing for the sake of feeling vulnerable or judged… but I’ve decided to just be transparent and let you see how the Lord works in me.

Goals for 2015

1.                 Get Established in a Church/Find a place to serve in the community

2.                 No soda

3.                 Give up Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and all rated R movies

4.                 Weight loss of 25lbs

5.                 Run 804 miles

6.                 No clothing/shoes/accessory purchases for myself

7.                 Invite people into our home at least once a month

8.                 Sell/Donate 2,015 items

9.                 Visit at least 10 DC attractions/museums

10.            Read through the Bible

11.            Pay of SallieMae

12.            Put $5000 extra in savings

13.            Have the whole house painted and functional

14.            Weekly family devotionals and communion

15.            Make a friend.

 I’m going to try to blog about my experiences and what God is teaching me through them.  Feel free to follow along to see what God is teaching me… or just keep up with latest Kriete happenings. :)

Thanks for joining me on the journey!

Surviving School

One of the hardest things to do as a mother is to watch your child struggle. Whether it be physically, academically, emotionally, or socially…. Watching your child struggle and knowing you can’t fix it is just plain hard. 

All of my kids were excited to start school. I think in all reality they were just ready to have interaction with other kids. It really has been just them for the entire summer. I was hopeful that it would be an easy transition, that they would make lots of friends the first day and feel right at home. For 2 of my children, that was the case. They are confident and social and they are going to be your friend, even if you aren’t seeking them out. That is just their personality. But Landen… he is timid until he is comfortable and wears his heart on his sleeve. He doesn’t like change and doesn’t handle it well. The entire move has been hard on him, and a new school where he knows ZERO people (other than his siblings) was really, really difficult. The first three days of school he came home upset every day. He didn’t understand a test he had to take, he had to sit alone at lunch, and no one played with him at recess. I’m not sure who cried more… him or me. That first week was rough!  I wanted to go to school with him and find him a good little friend and just fix it, but I couldn’t. And even though it is so, so very hard to watch your child struggle and hurt you know that this is what is building character and making them the person that God intends them to be. How they react and cope with the difficulty of their struggle can be guided by you (the parent), but you can’t (and shouldn’t) always fix it.

I think this is how God views us. He sees us struggling and hurting. Do I know that He could fix it and make it so that we never hurt or never struggle- yes. But I also know the most difficult, trying, hurting, struggling times in my life were times that made me the person I am; allowed me to have the relationship that I have with the Lord. If I never struggled, if I could handle everything on my own… then why would I need to lean on the Lord for my strength?

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

The Lord has a plan. He doesn’t want to harm us, wants to give us HOPE and a FUTURE. I know sometimes it is a lot harder than others to see HOPE in our circumstance, and sometimes it is long after the difficult situation has passed before we can see how God was at work, but I know He is there. I have to use that HOPE and faith in the Lord to get me through situations where I just can’t fix it. 

So when we came around to Monday and headed back to school, Landen was nervous and didn’t want to go. We talked before going to school about a few little things he could pray in his head if a hard situation like a test, or being lonely at lunch or recess came up. I prayed with him before school individually and then let him lead the family prayer in the car on the way to school.  I spent my whole day praying for him and thinking about him and was really anxious as I sat in the car line to pick him up. When I saw him come out of school with a huge smile on his face, I knew it had been a better day.  I asked him if he used the prayers we talked about that morning. He said, “No. I couldn’t really remember them. But that song ‘Whoa… we’re half way there, Whoa…. Living on a prayer’ was in my head all day long, so that kind of helped.” So even when he couldn’t remember my words… God gave him a little Bon Jovi to get him through the day.  :) He made a friend that sat by him at lunch and played with him at recess. He was out two days with strep throat (which I thought would be a huge set back) but managed to have 2 more friends (and by that I mean kids that he actually knows their names and interacts with) and plays soccer with a big group of boys at recess. 

I know there will be set backs, and I know there will be more struggles ahead. But I also know that the Lord has a great plan for Landen (and all my children), and I will just pray that I am a useful tool and guide on the process. 

We are all trying to get plugged in. We are allowing them to be involved and try to find their niche.  We started soccer up this week  for the older 3 and the kids are finding the programs they want to get involved in at school. This is all new, and it is hard to be the new person (for all of us, not just the kids). But we are pluggin’ along and trusting in the Lord’s great plan.

Thanks for joining me on the journey!

Perspective

Sometimes it just takes seeing a bad situation to appreciate the one you are in… knowing how good you really have it.  Over the last month I have gained a lot of perspective.  I have done this in several areas of my life, and I must say, it makes life just a little bit sweeter.

We tagged along with Eric on a work trip (in a small hotel room…6 of us)mostly because I wasn’t ready to spend an extended time alone in Maryland, not because work trips are fun. We spent our vacation budget on moving this summer, so we didn’t have money set aside to do “vacationy” things. We were in Orlando, a city that knows how to get you to spend some money, and we were on a $0 budget.  So we spent our time doing free/cheap stuff. So we spent most days at the hotel pool and did beaches on the weekend. We did one day of Downtown Disney (because it is free), but most of the time we just hung out. In Orlando it also rains a lot…like every day. It doesn’t rain all day (usually), but you do get rain everyday. So on about day 6 (we were there for 18 days) we ventured to the local Goodwill and got a chess/checker/domino set and a NIB Chutes and Ladders… for under $7! We also had no oven. Stove top and microwave (there were lots of PB&J sandwiches consumed) and a fridge that does not open all the way. 

Here is where perspective makes a world of a difference. I could have been really frustrated (I know this because we have made this trip with Eric before, and I was frustrated the entire time), but I chose not to be.  We swam when it was sunny, and came in when it wasn’t.  Everyone had their own activity and could work on it by themselves or with a sibling. My kids watched way too much Animal Planet (and thanks to Dirty Jobs I got to answer way more questions than I wanted to about childbirth after all of my children watching Mike Rowe pull a calf), and I watched way too many re-runs of Friends late at night. I learned to become super efficient at packing food for an entire day away from the hotel, mastered the art of spending an entire day at the beach with minimal tears and sand coming home with us, and let my kids “be kids” so much more than I did 2 years ago at this exact hotel.  I learned to appreciate the fact that someone else was making beds and scrubbing bathrooms, rather than be annoyed some “stranger” was always in our space. I even missed the dog. :) And most importantly for me at this season in my life… I wanted to be home… in Maryland.  The small space of a hotel room and my kids not being able to play outside without me right there really made me appreciate the huge blessing of a home I have. I have a nice house, with a big yard where my kids can run and play.  We are all together, and even though at times it feels lonely, it is our home… and I am so thankful for it.

Over the last month I have seen a lot of heartache from a distance.  It makes it hard to be away and know you can’t be there.  So today, instead of being sad about all the things that are different, or hard, or lonely, or far away… I choose to change my perspective.  I am so very thankful to have a healthy husband that loves me, four happy, healthy children that love the Lord, and a place I call home… where all the people I love the most in this world are right here with me. 

Thanks for joining me on the Journey!