The last week of 2015 and I am thinking about what my intensions for 2016 will be. I find if I focus on a few words through the year and make a list of the intentions of how I want my year to go. I far better than if I just set goals. Goals are good, but goals also are easy to give up and forget about. I find if I have an intention, a desire, a vague notion of where I want to head then I am not so overwhelmed. I’m all for goals, do not get me wrong. They have their purpose, but so do intentions. I prefer to set my intention and then have tiny goals after that. That’s how my mind works.
My focus words will be: Identity, possible, open, Worship, and commitment. I have many different reasons for each word. I will try to explain, just to warn you. I have a feeling this will be a long post, a rambling post. If you want to read on, I will suggest you stop here, go grab a hot cup of tea or cocoa or coffee and get comfortable. I am comfortably sitting on my couch, with the Christmas lights on, and my cat Nicholas beside me as I type this. Nicholas is my muse.
Now that we are all comfortable, I will now share my intentions with you. As you know from last year, I am a focus word person. I have chosen 5 of them this year. I spent time praying, contemplating, and musing over each word.
Identity: I chose Identity because I need to know who I am in Jesus, who I am outside of my illness, who I am with my illness, and most importantly what I can become with Jesus, my illness, and all those tiny fractures that make me who I am. I know I am a new creation. I know I am a child of God. I also know that I am valuable and worth fighting for. The need for deeper meaning and identity has made itself known to me.
Possible: Possible is mention several times throughout the Bible. It’s important, don’t you think if God/Jesus mentions it several times. We are to know that nothing is impossible with Jesus. I have moments of knowing this, but I have more moments where I let the mind monsters take hold of my brain. I hate that. My mind monsters suck the life out of me, I don’t know about you, but I sometimes want to kick them in the butt and tell them to get out. I want to feel the comfort, peace, and internal knowing that all things are possible. Not just have the head knowledge, but know it in my heart, soul, and entire being.
Open: I know this one word will be the hardest for me. It requires me to trust. It requires me to open up the gates I have built around my heart, my body, my mind, and my soul so that I can let Jesus in, let a man in, to let my friends in, to let my family in. It requires me to expose myself and trust that I will not be hurt. That is hard. I’ve been deeply wounded. Being open and learning to trust has been presenting itself and I know it is a fear that I must face down. I have desires for a true, loyal, respectful, loving, non-critical, non-judgmental, and non-drama relationship. I have had two. They both nearly killed me. I know that I can have this desire.
Commitment: Without commitment, you can’t accomplish your goals. I’m committing to my own wellness goals, all of them, especially those around my weight. I have proven with my illness that I am capable of diving head first into taking valuable care of myself. It just hasn’t shown in the weight loss arena. That will be changing in 2016. God and I had a nice, long chat about it. I will will full heartily give up gluten and grains, including legumes. I have known for quite some time that my body cannot handle gluten, grains such as rice, or legumes. They just go straight through me and it isn’t the solid poop, but the messy kind. The messy kind every time you eat a food indicates that your body does not accept it. It isn’t digesting it properly and you are not absorbing the healthy nutrients from it. It treats it like poison. It’s hard for me to give up cheese. It’s my favorite. But in order to be healthy, I must. On January 1st, I will begin this new challenge. This is my commitment publically. I also am committing to writing more in depth posts about my struggles, my research into things, and my progress. Not just monthly progress reports. When I first got sick. I felt like I should run and hide my weakness, but God told me not to. He told me to voice it, talk about, and do not hide. So, in that same format that is how I am going to face the challenge of my obesity. In the same way I have been open about my struggles with my Vasculitis and RA and my throat issues. With an honest voice, about why I got where I am at, the progress I am making, my commitment, and the emotional struggles. I will write more about my emotional struggles in a later post.
Worship: While watching a TV evangelist on TV. I had an epiphany about myself. I have a hard time with worshiping Jesus. I’ve been around people my entire life who worship him, but it always seemed for show. It seems fake. It seemed over the top and on purpose, not from the heart. Not for God’s benefit, but their own. God tells us to worship him privately. He tells us to pray to him privately too. Not making a big show. Along with being open, worship will be hard for me too. I love Jesus, don’t get me wrong, but opening myself up to something that scares me will be challenging. I already have a wide variety of Christian music to help me with worship through music, but I am a firm believer that worship doesn’t just involve music. I will explore this more in 2016
Along with my focus words I have a list of the intentions I hope to accomplish in 2016. While my focus words give me a foundation, my actual goals give me steps to my focus words.
- Weigh 50 pounds less
- Go on three hikes
- Get the laser surgery or resectioning whichever one the doctor and I decide on.
- Have a male friend to go out on adventures with
- Take more photos of nature and the people I love.
- Read 50 books in a year, not just non-fiction, but fiction too
- Try 50 recipes this year
- Color for relaxing and get a nice set of color pencils
- Post a positive blessing daily
- Once a week write a letter or note to someone that I value
- Get the addresses so I can send these notes
- Write an article a month for Jamie Chases Butterflies and Chasing Wellness with Jamie
- Stick to a sleep schedule
- Stick to a wake up schedule
- Record my dreams
- Pray/talk to God regularly
- Have a bible study
- Worship Jesus with music, art, singing, encouraging, and whatever means I find
- Organize my apartment, by getting my memento’s in order, including pictures
- Get a smaller dining room table
- Give up gluten and grains
- Invest in my emotional Hygiene (more on what this means later, as I will write a post about it)
Have a safe and wonderful New Year’s Eve. I am staying home, enjoying a movie and snuggling with my fur baby. The weekend I will be celebrating my mom’s 85th birthday with my family. I’m looking forward to some family time.
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