Source for this image here.
Do you make new year's resolutions?
We don't usually make resolutions, but the start of a new year is always a good time to review your daily habits and routines, and your living environment, and see if there are any improvements that can be made! Today Little Bear and I were very busy doing a little "spring clean". I focussed on the bathroom, and Little Bear worked on the kitchen. Now that we are done, everywhere is bright and sparkling and it really feels as if we've made a fresh new start for the year!
Although I've not made any proper resolutions, there are a few themes that I hope will be areas I can focus on this coming year. Already I have a made a start with one of them, by looking at ways to improve the family's nutrition, and experiment with some different meals. We've all been enjoying the ones I have made so far, especially some of the lovely salads we've been having at dinner time (our midday meal). When we went to the supermarket last Friday we picked up some new salad dressing ingredients, including walnut oil and a beautiful apple balsamic vinegar, which is truly delicious! It's by far the nicest vinegar we've ever tried, really tangy and mellow, and it brings out beautifully the flavours of the salad ingredients we've been enjoying it with.
But there are some other themes that I am hoping to carry through the year. One of them is to be more creative - I've always got lots of projects in my mind, but this year I hope to actually make some of them! We all 4 of us have projects in mind that we want to work on, so we're going to give each other encouragement to motivate us. We're hoping to do some family "home improvements" this year too - we've been living in our current home for 7 years now (which is a long time for us) and we all feel as if we'd benefit from some updates to our decor. Nothing fancy or extravagant - just a fresh coat of paint here and there, which will make everywhere look new, even if it isn't!
Also on my list of themes are some areas I want to work on spiritually. One of my Christmas gifts from Papa Bear was a beautiful new Bible, which I started reading today! For the past 2 years we have been using a "Bible in a year" for our morning Bible Study, and C.H. Spurgeon's "Morning And Evening" for our daily devotions, but this year we feel like we would like a change, so we are going to use my new Bible with a printed reading schedule for the year, and for our devotions, "Living Light", which also has a morning and evening devotion for each day. This will bring we hope a new perspective to our Bible Studies, and help us to grow further in our faith together. I love doing our Bible studies together, and a phrase has been going through my head for a couple of days now, which to me sums up what our quiet times mean to me - "sweetness and light". Sweetness, because those early morning moments are perhaps the tenderest of all, when it is just Papa Bear and I, sharing our faith together in our earnestness to grow closer to God. Sweet because for me, to be able to grow in my faith, I must go to Him like a child - sweet and innocent (Matthew 18: 2 - 3). And light, because that is exactly what we find, through the darkness of winter and our stumbling as Christians, when we seek God earnestly -
"Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8: 12).
As we study our Bibles, then, and follow God's plan for us, so we shall be rewarded with the warmth and glory of His light. That's what I shall endeavour to do this coming year - and I hope that through the posts on this blog, as I continue to learn to follow God's will and His plan for me as a wife and mother, I shall be able to share with you my experiences!
"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun" (Ecclesiastes 11: 7).
