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How many of you are ready for a New Year? Everyone I know feels delight that the past 12 months are over. 2020 was a challenge for everyone in one way or another.

At the beginning of every year (and especially after 2020) is a great time to set yourself up for the greatest year ever. Is this possible? What if circumstances in my life and the world stay the same?

I believe that regardless of what is going on the world we can have a great year. The government and other people do not determine what happens at your house. Hardships will come and go. Tragedy will come and go. Obstacles will always be with us. People will pass away. A job will be lost. People will hurt us. Sickness will come. Bad things happen to good people. However your response to everything is your choice. If you accept that attitude is a choice you can change your world.

Allow me to add that I realize pain is real. At the same time I believe even pain can be used for good and bring glory to God. One of my favorite quotes is by Ernest Hemingway: “We are all broken, that’s how the light get’s in.” Jesus is the light. Joy is not the absence of pain but joy is presence of God.

Here are a few questions to set yourself up for the best year ever. I urge you to sit down with a journal, alone, with a cup coffee and put your thoughts on paper.

1. What have I learned?

2. What have I accomplished?

3. Who did I add value to?

4. What held me back?

5. Do I still love what I do?

6. Am I living out my priorities?

7. What habit or change would aid me most?

8. What would I try if I knew I could not fail?

9. What would I most like to change about myself and how might I do this?

10. What brings me the most joy and how am I going to do more of that?

11. What is one change I could make in my life that would give me more peace?

12. At the end of this year, how would I like to be different?

At the beginning of every year I get alone and answer questions such as this. At the end I also choose a focus word for the new year. I like to choose a word that defines what I hope to achieve and then try to think about this word daily. Some words I have chosen in the past have been Intentional, Transform, Connect, Renew and Revive.

Feel free to share your focus word in the comment section.

My prayer is that this post serves as a catalyst to your best year ever.

Today, March 22, 2020 there are 26,747 cases in America and 138 in Alabama. We have been quarantine like most of you reading this blog. Last week we officially closed our small business. Other than a quick run to the pharmacy, doctor office or grocery store I have stayed home. I have washed my hands and kept my hands away from my face.

Today I realize that I have been a carrier. A carrier of fear. And people around me catch what I carry. We are all carriers. What are you carrying? Is it worth catching? What I have been carrying the past week is not worth catching?

I made the decision to put on a worship video. I listened as I cleaned some junk drawer and cabinets. For 2 hours I worshipped and prayed. My fear was replaced with faith, love and hope. This is what I choose to carry The Good News. Worry and anxiety is contagious, so is hope. Fear is contagious, so is peace. Hate is contagious, so is love.

In the New Testament believers were contagious. The Good News spread. Believers were faithful, loving and had hope. I didn’t spread this last week. I realize that I have been lukewarm. I have been comfortable. I have been so busy with life that I have allowed my fire to grow dim.

This is a wakeup call for the church. My hope should not be in the government. My hope should not be in doctors, though I appreciate all they are doing. Nor should my hope be in spiritual leaders. My hope is in the one who spoke all things into being. My hope is in the one who died for me. My hope is in Jesus. He is our shelter in a time of trouble. In his presence demons flee. He is the resurrection and the life.

God is not surprised by this Wuhan virus. God is always good. And good news spreads. While the world is growing dark, Jesus is the light. Whatever we are facing, look to Jesus. Jesus is here. Jesus is good. Jesus is with me. Jesus is with you.

I am a carrier and so are you. May we spread faith, love and hope today. May we be a light to the world. I believe something good can come out of this time. This is our opportunity to spread faith, give love and hope.

You are a carrier.

When a daughter loses a mom the world changes. You realize that no one will ever love you like that again. I always knew that no matter what I did, good or bad, she loved me anyway. Not to say that my husband or son’s love isn’t great, but it’s not the same as the love of a mother.

A mother’s love isn’t judgmental. It’s kind and forgiving yet bold and endearing. It’s the love written about in I Corinthians 13. And when you can’t see or hold that love anymore the world is different.

The early morning I got the call that my mom was ill I pleaded with God and prayed all the way to the hospital…”God, please don’t let my mom die today.” Over and over the same prayer. My request was not to be. I didn’t even get to tell her goodbye. It was her time to go.

A year ago today I lost a chunk of my heart. Today is the last first. Her first birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Easter, my birthday, etc. has passed. Today is bittersweet. On one hand I know I’ve made it through some of the really tough days so I know I will survive. But after a year, I still feel “okay, that’s enough time to wake up not from this terrible dream.”

I don’t think a daughter can be prepared for the passing of her mother. I thought I was. I’m an educated, intelligent, successful woman. I read plenty of books on death, dying and grief. I spent years in full time ministry. I thought I was ready to face it. My mom and I spoke tenderly about my life without her. She was a devout Christian and ready to go. But I wasn’t ready to lose her. Oh how I wanted more time.

Sitting with her for an hour after she passed, I called my husband and my son who was an intern in DC. Walking out of her room for the last time felt so surreal. Kissing her forehead. Covering her with a blanket. I actually felt weird leaving her alone.

My son Matthew was home sleeping when I woke him to share the news. The day was filled with calls to my siblings and other family members who lived out of town. In a blur I went to the funeral home to make arrangements. I chose the dress she wore to my wedding. I chose her lipstick. I planned her after funeral luncheon. I wrote her eulogy. It only took me 10 minutes but I believe God gave me the perfect words.

The memories of August 2, 2018 will stay in my heart forever. So here I am one year later. I don’t feel like I have crossed a finish line on achieving any type of closure. I don’t feel healed. I still have my grief with me. It is a part of me now. The past year has allowed me to find a way to accommodate my grief, like a sudden and permanent limp that doesn’t stop you completely but will forever alter the way you move through the world.

This week Barbara Bush died and I saw one of her best quotes.

“You just don’t luck into things as much as you’d like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it’s friendships or opportunities.”

What are you building? Is it what you need? Is it what you value?

Fill in the blank:

I want to ________________________________________.

I need __________________________________________.

Life is short. Don’t waste anymore time wishing you had. Do it now. You can love your life. Need help? Call me for coaching. First half hour call is complimentary.

By Brianna Wiest

Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

The act of self-care has become yet another thing women are expected to be good at. Did you use the right filter for that ‘gram of your impeccably prepared acai bowl? Are the candles you just lit in your Snap story made from organic hand-poured soy or are they that mass-produced factory shit? And how can we stem the inevitable capitalist tide from turning something as simple as self-care into yet another thing to be bought and sold? These are all things I wrestle with as I order Dominos in sweatpants under the guise of ‘being good to myself.’ – quote via Amil Niazi

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.

Would you invest one hour in yourself to set up for the best year ever?

Life is full and a new year is a great time to evaluate and look at where you are and where you are going. I find it helpful to answer the questions listed and write down your answer. Each one will force you to focus on the priority of life and not get lost in the trivial.

1.  What are my top 3 memories of 2017?
2. What are 3 memories I want to create in 2018?
3. What area in my life worked best in 2017?
4. What area in my life do I most want to improve 9n 2018?
5. What is one thing that needs to happen for me to start 2018 strong?
6. What do I need to start doing in 2018?
7. What do I need to stop doing in 2018?
8. Who do I need to express more gratitude toward in 2018?
9. What fear or fears are hiding me back from what God wants for me?
10. If you could make one change in your life right now, what would it be?

Working hard is important, but so is take time for evaluation and planning. Fail to plan and plan to fail.

In the last 24 hours I have not only evaluated and planned but I filled my calendar with activity needed to accomplish my goals There are many good calendars out there but my personal favorite is the Passion Planner. This planner consist of a monthly page, weekly, To Do List, goal and strategy page and also 2 pages for weekly evaluation. It’s easy to write down goals but the weekly evaluation is what will set you up for the best year ever.

 

 

Life is full of difficult decisions that impact our lives. Usually our choice is not between good and bad but good and best. Or average and great.

My most difficult decision was putting my mom in a nursing home. Today they are called skilled nursing facilities. I so wanted her to live out her final days at our home surrounded by people who love her. This was my plan for as long as I can remember. With every home we have always prepared a guest room so that we would be prepared when my mom joined us.

Mom was with us less than a year before needing 2 hospital stays with the last resulting in rehab. I sought out the best rehab I could find when her primary physician finally suggested I accept that mom was on a spiral decline and would need skilled nursing 24/7. At first I felt like a failure for not being able to meet all of her needs. It didn’t help that one sibling didn’t understand or like that “I” was putting her in a nursing home and made it clear she would not have anything to do with my decision to do so. She is not updated on her condition because she does not call, email or text us for her health updates. I wanted to tell her that mom cannot walk and needs 2 people to assist her going to to the bathroom, that she needs a lift to get her in and our of bed, she needs help eating, shower assistance and all of these things require special machines and equipment that we do not have. Basically mom cannot do anything on her own. It would be impossible for one person to meet her needs. Home nursing is expensive. We could not afford to pay for 24/7 care and neither could she. So yes I chose to put my mom that I adore in a nursing home.

My greatest regret is that I did not insist my mom move in with us 4 years ago. We were looking for a home with a private bedroom and bath on a first floor home. We found one that would work perfectly for mom. Large room, den & private bath for her. My husband was thrilled that when mom moved in with us she could save all of her money in case she needed it in her latter years for private nurses. If she had done this, today she would have $96,000.00 for her nursing care while living at my home. Yes. $96,000.00. Today if mom had financial resources she would have better options. She could live with us because she could afford home health care 24/7 She would be surrounded by people who love her. She would have good healthy food to eat, immediate help going to the bathroom when needed, and shower when she desired. It’s also possible that her dementia might not have progressed so rapidly because she may not have had the 3 hard falls hitting here head. Each fall was at a facility. But 4 years ago a relative who knew we were buying a home with room for mom, moved her belongings to a retirement community while she was in the hospital. This was done without my mom being asked or my knowledge. It was also during this 4 year period that I discovered her primary caregiver had embezzled thousands of dollars from her bank account until there was nothing left.

We do not regret that mom moved to Fairhope. She has a family member visit every other day for 1-3 hours. Mom has never had that many family visits. She has good days and bad. Mom usually remembers my family and I unless she is tired. She will forget my older son who is at college. We look at photos at every visit. She does not know the names of the faces in the pictures. On a great day she might recognize a face in the book. She tires easily. I visit all times of the day and night and have learned what the best times for her are. Today she didn’t feel like taking. She wanted to sleep so I just sat with her and held her hand.