New Year Resolutions?

I have never been one for trying to make a huge list of New Year Resolutions. However, I do have lots of things I would like to accomplish during 2009 (most in regards to homeschooling and the Children’s Choir I teach at church) but I am not sure if those are really considered New Years Resolutions or not. See I would like to get back into exercise again. I always, around November, loose track of my exercising until after the holidays. Of course I have a long laundry list of school things I would like to complete by the end of summer 2009, choosing new music for the choir, etc. But these are all just normal everyday things I think of all year long. However, there are two things that I really want to start doing starting on January first?

The first one is to finally love my body! I have been skinny in my elementary years, fat most of my teenage/early 20's, skinny once again in late 20's and most of my 30's and then back to fat currently after I had my little girl. I have felt the feelings of bliss fitting into a size 10 and walking down the street getting whistles and the feeling of agony fitting into a size 20 and the looks of horror on people faces as they see me walking towards them. But now I am in my 40's and I finally just realized that I need to be happy with my body no matter what size it is. Now that does NOT mean I will stop exercising and eating right. It just means that I will not beat myself up everyday when I look in the mirror for not being what everyone else in this world wants me to be. So my resolution is to be content with my body. I did that once before and when I became that content I lost 120 pounds. Maybe that will work again, maybe not, but I know I will sure feel a lot better about myself no matter what the outcome and be a lot happier.

My second resolution is to finally read the bible from cover to cover. I have never read the Bible from beginning to end before. I have read most of the books of the Bible through book studies at least once, but this year I am going to read it in chronological order. I have a daily reader Bible that is in chronological order and my church is also starting a group that happens to be using the same book. So we will all blog about it each day. Now that’s a whole God thing in itself. I was planning on doing this and had set a plan for it, had the Bible in hand when a few days later I received an email from my church saying they were putting this exact same Bible study together. Must be a God telling me that this was the right thing for me to be doing this coming year!

I will also be reading each day’s entries to my children as part of their Bible study. We will still do their regular daily Bible study, but I will add this reading too. I am hoping that by reading the entries out loud I will understand and retain more of the information I am reading as well as my children will pick up on some of the information I will be reading to them. I want to get them out of their children’s Bible and into the real Word of God sooner then later. Yea, I have always read passages from the Bible, but when we read stories it has always been from the Children’s Bible. This will be a wonderful change in our Bible time together.

How will I make these resolutions stick? I have 3 steps that I think will help me to make these two things become a habit.

1. For each resolution, focus in on one goal at a time I can do to make the change. Example: if you want to loose weight focus in on eating 3 pieces of fruit each day. When this has been accomplished, focus on another small goal.

2. Put together monthly objectives. Example: For the Bible reading I have put a check list of chapters to read each day for the month of January.

3. Don't beat myself up if I mess up. Example: Keep positive thoughts like "I have done really good so far. Lets get back on track tomorrow".

Anyway, I would love to hear from all of you and what you thoughts are on New Years resolutions. Do you have them? What are they? Are you totally against them? Write me and let me know. You can either comment on the blog or send me a personal email. And if you are interested at all in doing the Bible Study with me, let me know. I would love to blog back and forth with you about what we learn and your take on things. Just an FYI, I do take the Bible to be literal not figurative. So keep that in mind as we discuss our thoughts on what we are about to learn.

In any case, I hope you all have a wonderfully safe and fun New Year. May God bless you and your family in 2009!