I was given an assignment recently to think in a futuristic way, essentially setting goals and seeing what would come of it.  Below is the result:

When I first heard futuristic thinking I thought of where my mind goes often, to the sci-fi realm. I imagine we were thinking our future selves and goals, etc but my future self is on a rocket ship.

Anyway, where I see myself from now to 10 years from now is promoting the green tech field, as far as new energy sources, smarter, sustainable cities, people living and depending on each other within a city block, urban farming, sharing gardens and everything with each other. My future self’s life is completely enmeshed with my community.

I want my children to grow up with a love for Christ, a love for community, and to not be brats as well as attain knowledge, have common sense, problem solving skills, well roundedness, and the distinct ability to think they can do anything. So my goals are to make that happen.

I want to still be interested and love and be loved by Jon when our kids leave home. So another goal is to cultivate our marriage.

And I want to be smart, interesting, and drop dead gorgeous. So the final goal is to drink a lot of coffee because I feel all of those things after I had my coffee in the morning.

Post christmas, post new years, post new years resolutions, during the dog days of a worn out new year, I never ceased to be surprised that it is time for Lent.  I seem to have finally caught my breath after the ridiculousness of four birthdays in the month before Christmas followed two weeks of wonderful family time.  By the end of that I don’t know which way is up and it takes me about 2 or so months to regroup.

Lent arrives and with it brings a solace, a time to draw in and learn again what sacrifice means.  It is redemption time, it is the process leading up to my favorite time of the year.  I love the journey towards Easter each year.  It is a time of newness as we sweep out the old to make way for new growth.  I sometimes hate sweeping out the old.

This year I decided to embark on a fruit and vegetable fast for lent to try to sweep out the old.  The old habits are killer, such as caffeine, sugar, wine.  I like those old habits, they make me feel as if I am smarter, happier, and prettier.  The lack of them have made me crabby with my husband and kids.  And being halfway through the lent season, my dreams have turned towards Easter morning and my favorite things about Easter.

Here are a few of my favorite things:

1. Cadbury Eggs
2. Easter baskets (I have already gotten most of the stuff for the kids baskets, I couldn’t help myself)
3. Sunrise services (Since having kids, not made it to most of these)
4. Hardboiled Eggs
5. Easter afternoon cookout with neighbors
6. The Greek traditional game of hitting the ends of a hardboiled egg with another person to see whose egg breaks
7. Chocolate
8. Wine
9. A lamb cake (pound cake with coconut frosting) my mom makes every year
10. Leg o lamb roast for dinner
11. Knowing Christ rose
12. Being with people I love
13. Jellybeans
14. Deviled Eggs
15. Lent is over
16. Pretty, new dresses for my girls
17. Pretty, new dress for me
18. Stations of the Resurrection at church
19. Baptism on Easter morning
20. Seeing my kids “get it” when we read the Easter Story

The journey is important, as well as the story, and perhaps my favorite part of Easter is weaving our family’s story into the bigger epic novel that Easter represents.  And teaching our kids how to write their own story, giving them the language and experiences so that they can pass Easter and all of it’s glory down to their kids.

I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms and Hop blogging program, for a gift card worth $25. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

… and, wait… who am i?  sheesh.  oh yeah coming out of a 60 hour work week and raising three kids.   I had forgotten all about my intentions for this month in the haze of deadlines and intensity.  i am uber-productivity.  i am… exhausted.  i am also crazy because i sent my husband and our neighbor off skiing all day tomorrow and decided it would be better if they went up tonight, so am hosting a sleep over.  and i am immensely happy.

we had pizza, doritos, root beer, popcorn and a movie…  and then a dance/wrestling party.  and now i can hear the trains in the distance and the beautiful sound of nothing.  all five little ones are recharging their batteries for fun craziness tomorrow.  so perhaps i am loving well…

My world has been laser focused down to 2 guys and 2 girls.  One of those guys being much much more important than all the others.  How do I love them well?  How do I love myself well?  I have a sneaky suspicion that there will be a continuation of my journey from last month.

I am slightly stymied as to what this looks like and what this means.  Loving someone else well in some ways means a slight or rather drastic death to self.  So let me set some goals so I can see what that looks like at the end of the month.

1. Choosing to take an interest (genuine) in something Jon is interested in.

2. Speaking other’s love languages to them, rather than expecting them to know mine.

3. Being gentle, yet firm with myself and diving deeper to discover how big the iceberg really is.

PS. To kick things off this month, we watched Eclipse together.  I am impressed Jon hung in there with me.  He always knows how to love me better than I do him.

It was more than I expected and the revelations were much more intense.  So let’s take a look, shall we, at the three things I thought I needed to look at.

1. I am undisciplined enough to stick with a budget.  It is always so interesting to me when I put something out there like this and commit to trying to stick with a budget what inevitably happens.  The first, and most exciting result of this statement was that, in fact, I set up our money software and did, to my surprise, check it everyday and try to keep things in line.  What was interesting is that we had next to no money come in.  So it always amuses me when this happens.  But the point really was to get the junk of never knowing out of my head and into a place of awareness.

2. I am undisciplined enough to intentionally decide what I put into my mouth.  Now this was a shocker.  I was intending to just track what I was eating and try to exercise.  What, in fact, came of this was something entirely different.  I discovered I was treating food as my savior, my solace, my boredom fixer.  I discovered that I was trying to make my food behave, and feeding my stomach when I had heart and head hunger.  I discovered a much darker place inside of me than I had known existed before and it is a much bigger journey than I had ever imagined.  I am taking the first steps and it is good…

3. I am undisciplined enough to attend to my spiritual life.  This is a shedding of the scales of my cynicism.  I am working on this.

The age-old new years resolution:  get in shape and lose weight.

UGH!!!!!!

So not a fun option, not a fun new years resolution.  But inevitable.  Like taxes.

Me, being a bit of a technophile, have discovered and actively sought out ways in which I can indulge in my techiness and do the 2 abhorrent resolutions mentioned above.

1. Couch to 5K app on my iPhone.  As of today I am 4 runs off of the couch.

2. Nike+ sensor that goes on my running shoes and interacts with the Nike+ app on my iPhone.  It is a pedometer, and goal setter, a record keeper, and the most important part of it is the Power Song option.

3. Wii fit.  Cheesy I know, but my sore glutes don’t lie (or maybe I am just that much out of shape).  Either way it is fun and AWESOME!!!

4. Weight Watchers app for iPhone.  Finally!!!! That’s all I have to say about that. If you are not part of Weight Watchers, check out the LoseIt app.

5. Facebook.  I have been more encouraged by other girlfriends in the same situation I find myself in.  Not enough time to get together with girlfriends to commiserate or work out together, but enough time to encourage each other throughout the day via comments on Facebook.  Plus the Nike+ is embarrassingly posting my runs and I haven’t figured out how to make them stop it.  But the side benefit of this is that I get lots of encouraging notes when it does post which makes me happy and slightly more motivated.

Please weigh in on other ways in which technology has been helping you stay fit.

Liberty Worth. Congrats Libby on winning the beautiful letterpress cards & gift tags! I would encourage all of check out Libby’s blog http://libbydibbystuff.blogspot.com/.  By the way, she is doing a free skirt giveaway this week.  I have three Libby Dibby skirts and love them.  She has been through the wringer this fall http://libbydibbystuff.blogspot.com/2009/11/aj-update.html but has managed to hang on to that deep river of joy.