slow

One Word.  There's one word, every year to focus on.  Or at least the past two years God has led me to a single word and it's been great and helped me grow (emotionally, physically, spiritually) in ways I wouldn't have if I didn't have a clear focus.  I'm a big fan on clear focuses.  Mainly because it feels organized and clean and most of you probably know that I like to be organized and clean :)

Right after Logan was born I started feeling the weight of mothering three children while being a wife and taking care of all the little house things and maintaining friendships and balancing ministries that we are involved in while remembering that my relationship with Christ is supposed to be top priority but staying in His word was not as easy as it had been a few weeks earlier with two semi self sufficient children.  Honestly if felt almost impossible.  The word SLOW showed in my head in the form of a giant marquee sign! It should have been a welcome word but it was a little daunting.  If there is one thing Zach and I have struggled it's wondering if we are doing too much or have too much going on.

For the first month of this year I stared at my chalkboard with the one word on it wondering and praying and thinking.  Am I supposed to slow down everything?  Does that mean drop stuff we're doing and just be home all the time?  Do I just move slower?  The point of this focus is to apply it to every aspect of my life in the small and big ways but I was struggling with what it even meant.  One day I looked up synonyms and started listing them around the word.  I saw ones like patient, deliberate, lazy :), passive, quiet, lessen, relax...not the written in stone I was hoping for (aren't we all!) but direction...somewhere.

It's been three months and I can pretty much say I'm failing at the one word except for one part, my mind.  We have not cut out anything, I guess we've actually added a bit more right now with baseball, the weight of it all is still felt daily, and my bible reading/praying time is definitely not the priority it should be but I feel my mind slowing (in a good way!) I am not thinking constantly about all the things I need to be doing or should be doing, but instead I feel more present in the one thing I'm doing at the time.  Whether it's my sweet boys, my amazing husband, or my heavenly father, whatever my current task is I can feel a slowing of my mind and a focus.  You might compare it to the tractor beam on the death star.  All of ME comes to together on the target but thankfully instead of a laser of destruction it's love and attention :)

There's a long way to go in figuring out how to apply SLOW in everything but for now I am very thankful that God has sent me on that path this year and pray that even in the busyness and feelings of failure I will see Him changing me and continuing to turn me into who He planned from the beginning.