Resolutions or one word for 2014?

The optimist or maybe artist in me loves a new year.  The blank pages laid out in front of me is very exciting.  The mistakes made in the precious year are gone, while the lessons learned will hopefully stick with us forever.  The idea of having a whole year to work on myself and improve relationships and focus on making changes make me very excited.  

Are you a resolution maker?  Or do you pick one word to focus on for a new year?  I choose to pick one word, because it is simply easier for me to focus.  If I make 5-10 resolutions, I may be successful with one of them.  I tend to make them too  broad, which I have learned from Michael Hyatt, is not a good way to set goals.  Goals should be specific and measurable and I have a very hard time with that.  

It is very easy for me to come up with what I want to do.  Coming up with a why is a lot harder for me.  I could pick a broad why, but that kind of defeats the purpose.  It needs to be specific to my what.  

I had made a list of several words that I had been thinking on to choose my word for the year.  I wrote them on a bookmark and would read them every single day, sometimes multiple times a day.  They were read every time I opened a book to read.  I was certain I was going to pick one of these words.  They were all good things to focus on for a year.  

Then as I started reflecting over 2013 and the things that really stuck with me from counseling, I remembered two different counselors telling me that one of the biggest things they hear from me is self-hatred.  I knew I struggled with liking myself, but never realized that I hated myself.  The longer I went to counseling, the more I realized I do struggle with hating myself.  

There were some things that came to light this year where I realized that I failed to protect two of my children from abuse.  I had absolutely no clue.  The perpetrator was someone I loved dearly.  The guilt and absolute hatred I felt for myself for not seeing the signs and failing to protect my kids is one of the strongest feelings I have ever had.  

I am a people pleaser and I struggle with others liking me.  I want everyone to like me and when they don't, I feel like a failure and hate myself, again.  

So this year, my one word, my one focus is love.  I goal is to learn to love myself.  I want to love myself and accept myself and see myself as God sees me.  I have come to realize that when I hate myself, I am hating one of God's creations.  God loves me and made me and if I hate me, that is essentially saying that God did not make me good enough.  I know that thought is absolute baloney.  

If I do not know what it is like to love myself and see myself how God sees me, how can I love others and see others the way God sees them?  My focus is to focus on my good qualities and not ignore my faults, work on my faults, but not focus on them.  My good character traits are what makes me me.  Not my faults.  I will always have faults on this side of heaven, but they should not be my focus.  

I long to see the good in everyone.  There is good in every single one of God's creations and that is what I want to focus on.  I want to love others the say God loves them.  I want to love my family the way God loves them.  I want to love my friends the way God loves them.  I long to be that safe person that they can come to at any time with any joy, any struggles, any sadness.  I want to live out this year showing God's love to everyone, every where I go.  

Closing the door to 2013

As I am reflecting back on 2013, I would have to say it was filled with many hills and many valleys.  The hills far outweighed the valleys, thankfully!  

Our year started with Ernie dealing with kidney stones, again.  He has had many experiences with them.  He was discharged from the hospital after a kidney infection from stones and found out that he had 8-9 stones right around Christmas.  So, in January, he was almost constant pain.  

February came around and I was noticing that I was a lot more anxious than normal, very irritable and just on edge almost all of the time.  I finally gave in and went to the doctor and begged for a prescription for Xanax.  I was complaining that my cycle was pretty late, but a midwife had told me I was premenopausal, so I didn't think anything of it.  I hadn't had regular cycles since my 2 year old, at the time, was born.  Well, surprise, surprise, my cycle was late and I was crazy hormonal & anxious because I was pregnant!  We thought our family was complete at 4, but God had a better plan.  

During the spring, we put our older two kids in counseling and I went back to counseling, trying to find healing after my brother's suicide.  One of my biggest lessons is that you cannot find healing after a tragedy like that.  God is the only way to healing after dealing with that kind of loss.  

I think almost 2 years later, I am finally coming to grips with the horrific loss I have felt over losing my brother.  There has been so much anger and bitterness for many reasons with him.  But the bottom line is that he was mentally ill.  He made many bad choices in his adult life and would not take responsibility and/or ask for help.  The control freak in me still wishes I could have forced him to get help, but the bottom line is that he made the choice that life was no longer worth living.  

I learned in counseling that I was dealing with a lot of self-hatred.  There are many reasons for that, but it's time to take responsibility for those thoughts and feelings and learn ways to turn that around loving myself, so that I can see and love others, the way Jesus sees and loved others.  

In August, our oldest returned to public school as a high school freshman.  It still hurts to say he is a freshman.  That has been quite an adjustment after 5 years of homeschooling.  My girls are still at home.  

The morning of 9/26, Annalee's birthday, one month before our newest blessing was due, my water broke.  After a long day of labor, she finally joined the world. She was a little peanut at only 18 1/4 inches and 4lbs 14oz.  She spent a week in the nicu.  She had no serious problems, but they kept hef for a week. Thankfully I was able to keep my hospital room and stay while the baby was in the nicu.  Baby girl turned 3 months old the day after Christmas and I cannot imagine our lives without her. She is such a gift.  

One of my biggest lessons of 2013, was that you cannot control anything.  God has his plan and his plan is always better than we could ask for or imagine. 

He has brought some wonderful ladies into my life that I love doing life with.  Ladies that allow me to be fully transparent and that love me just the same.  That has been a tremendous blessing for me.  

Just when I think that I have things figured out, God gives us a huge surprise.  I am so grateful for his surprises!  

Jesus Is ....... by Judah Smith

I received this book for free from Booksneeze in exchange for an honest review.  All thoughts are my own.  I chose to read this book, because I had several friends that read it and loved it.  I probably made it through the first 50 pages and I was struggling to read any more.  I would read a chapter, then go read another book.  I had a very hard time staying interested in the book.  Once I made it to 5 chapters from the end of the book, I was finally interested.  I think the book is very well written.  Judah Smith raises some great points.  I loved hearing about grace and God loving us just where we are.  He talks about not being able to earn your way into heaven. I love that.  

Review of If We Survive by Andrew Klavan

I love any time I get a chance to read anything by Andrew Klavan.  I also love that I can pass these books onto my teenage son and he loves reading them also.  I love the characters in Andrew Klavan's books.  Will and Meredith captured my heart and I loved reading about them.  I would love to follow them in another book!

The book description says:

They came on a mission of mercy, but now they’re in a fight for their lives.

High schooler Will Peterson and three friends journeyed to Central America to help rebuild a school. In a poor, secluded mountain village, they won the hearts of the local people with their energy and kindness.

But in one sudden moment, everything went horribly wrong. A revolution swept the country. Now, guns and terror are everywhere—and Americans are being targeted as the first to die.

Will and his friends have got to get out fast. But streets full of killers . . . hills patrolled by armies . . . and a jungle rife with danger stand between them and the border. Their one hope of escape lies with a veteran warrior who has lost his faith and may betray them at any moment. Their one dream is to reach freedom and safety and home.

If they can just survive.

The book kept my attention from the first page to the last page.  I loved not knowing what was going to happen and the excitement of wondering what was going to happen.  I would highly recommend this book to others.  I received this book free from Booksneeze in exchange for an honest review.

Review of Heaven's Lessons by Steve Sjogren

The description of this book says:

“If you’d asked me who God is on December 9, the year of my accident, I would have been able to give you a fairly cohesive but theoretical answer. A day later all of that changed.”

A simple surgery went horribly wrong. Steve Sjogren died on the operating table. He encountered a heavenly world where he felt infinite peace. And then he had to come back—back to a physical reality filled with pain and disability and an endless line of tests.

The drama of dying suddenly paled in comparison to the trauma of living. Sjogren could not face this new existence with his same old comfortable understanding of God.

“I had minimized God,” Sjogren says. “Somehow, over time, he had become fairly predictable—like he could be outlined, fully grasped, and contained in a neat set of mere ideas. Now I saw that he apparently wasn’t all that impressed with my cool little notebooks.”

One day in heaven followed by hundreds in agony forged a deeper and stronger faith than Sjogren could have crafted on his own. In Heaven’s Lessons, Sjogren shares his experiences and the life-changing ways they have affected his perspective on success, suffering, and the mysteries of God.

If I could have reviewed this book about 1/4 to 1/3 in, I would have said I loved it.  The beginning of the book was great and really held my attention.  Once I got to about page 140-150, I was trying to just make it to the end of the book, because I did not like it.  Every time I opened the book to read it after page 150, I wanted to go to sleep.  I did feel really bad for the things that have happened in Steve's life with the operations and recovery.  I cannot imagine going through that.  I loved reading that he recovered, but it could have been a much shorter book, in my opinion.  I would not recommend this book to others.  I received this book from Booksneeze for free, in exchange for an honest review.  

Review of The Sky Beneath My Feet by Lisa Samson

The cover of this book looked cute and piqued my interest.  I ordered the e-book from Booksneeze to read and honestly was really disappointed in the book.  The cover of the book was much cuter than the book itself, in my opinion.  I think it was written well, but I had a hard time staying interested in the story.

The description says:

Being married to a saint isn't what it's cracked up to be.

Beth's husband won't be joining the family on vacation at the beach this year. He's not even joining them in the house. Instead, Rick has holed up alone in the backyard shed. Nobody knows exactly what he's up to. Maybe he's immersing himself in prayer. Maybe he's lost his mind. Maybe he's even the modern-day prophet or the saint the neighborhood artist imagines him to be. But while "St. Rick" waits for an epiphany, Beth will have to figure out what to do with herself and their teenage sons, possibly for the rest of her life.

What happens next is both uproarious and bittersweet: a peace march turns violent, her son is caught with drugs, and she embarks on an ambitious road trip that turns into something nearly surreal. Will Beth rediscover the idealistic woman she used to be, once upon a time? Can her marriage survive Rick's backyard vigil? Will anything ever be the same? And should it be?

Truthful, comic, heartbreaking, and magical in the very best sense of the word, The Sky Beneath My Feetgently tears the veil off our egos and expectations to reveal the throbbing, redemptive, and achingly beautiful life beyond and within us.

I had a very hard time relating to Rick.  I felt like there wasn't much explained about him in the story at all.  I enjoyed Beth's story through out the book, but the rest of the book was hard to read.  I would not recommend this book to others.  

I received this book for free from Booksneeze/Thomas Nelson in exchange of an honest review.  These are my views on the book.  

Review of A Matter of Trust by Lis Wiehl

Mysteries are usually not my favorite genre to read, but I have really been into mysteries lately.  I had never heard of Lis Wiehl, but I decided to give one of her books a try.  I loved most of the book.  I was trying to figure out who the murderer was from the third or fourth chapter, but I never would have guessed who it was.

The description says:

When life is murder, who can you trust?

One minute Mia Quinn is in her basement, chatting on the phone with a colleague at the prosecutor’s office. The next minute there’s a gunshot over the line, and Mia listens in horror as her colleague and friend Colleen bleeds to death.

Mia’s a natural for heading up the murder investigation, but these days she has all she can do to hold her life together. As a new widow with a pile of debts, a troubled teenaged son, and a four-year-old who wakes up screaming at night, she needs more time with her family, not less—and working Colleen’s case will be especially demanding. But Colleen was her friend, and she needs to keep her job. So she reluctantly teams up with detective Charlie Carlson to investigate Colleen’s death. But the deeper they dig, the more complications unfold—even the unsettling possibility that someone may be coming after her.

Lis Wiehl’s signature plot twists and relatable characters shine in this absorbing series debut . . . with an intriguing cameo from her best-selling Triple Threat series.

I loved the ending of the book.  It was very suspenseful.  I would recommend this book to others.  I received this book for free from Booksneeze/Thomas Nelson, in exchange for an honest review.