My daughter came in and dragged me out to the garage to show me something a few minutes ago. When I came out, she showed me that she and her neighbor friend (age 7) had cleaned the garage. And indeed they had. They had picked up the scattered empty boxes and neatly stacked them against the wall. They had swept up the piles of some white powder (fertilizer, maybe) that had been scattered there by who knows who a few days ago, and had generally tried to make it look nice. Not that it was a terrible mess before, but it did look neglected, and now it didn’t.

I told them they had done a great job and gave them a hug. Then I decided it was time to post something on this blog, so I came here and so did. Not that I’m planning on getting back into regular blogging, but I think I can spare a few moments now and again to record a few special moments in my life before I forget them. After all, I think that’s why I started this blog in the first place.

First off, I’m sorry I forgot to insert the linky tool in last week’s post. However, no one even commented, so I guess it wasn’t missed. I have decided to continue this topic, even if no one participates, because I need to do it for me. That said, though, I would love if some of my readers would participate!

Last week my decision was:

I resolve to make a plan for checking email and being online and to claim victory over wasting time online.

Did I make a plan? Yes. Have I gained consistent victory in this area? No. What can I say? It is not easy to change strong habits. However… as I have continued on with the All Power seminar, I got down to days 25-27, where I have been forced (yes, I chose that word on purpose) to look very closely at myself and my priorities and values, and to make some changes. I have spent a lot of spare thinking time (I say thinking time, because my hands have usually been very busy) trying to figure out where certain areas of my life, especially my blogs, fit into what I want out of life. I think I have figured it out–more abstractly than concretely at the moment–and I’ll probably share about it in a future post once it crystallizes better in my mind. All I know is that if I choose to live by my list of Ultimate End Values that I made yesterday, I will be spending less time in general on the Internet and in particular less time on this blog.

Here is my plan, however, for what it’s worth: I have decided to set certain time frames for being online. These are scheduled into my day, just like other activities like time with God and eating. However, because Internet has lower priority than other things like home and husband and children, the demands of home and husband and children may at times supersede my need to get online, and I may have to forgo time online.

What I do online is going to change somewhat. My list of end values is going to change my focus of activities. For instance, at this point in time financial security is going to have to take precedence over community, especially because my husband is going back to school and my son has expensive health issues. So if I have to choose between writing a post on some helpful cleaning tip for this blog and posting a couple of items on eBay, I’ll choose eBay. I know this could affect my blog in many ways, but I have decided that having lots of readers is not important anymore. I want to share more about who I am and less about what I know here.

I have also decided that I cannot make 5 decisions a week. I just don’t have it in me to focus on that many things right now. So I have made two. Here is one of them:

I determine to make my relationship with God the #1 priority in my life.

I have said that it is, but I have not practiced it. Now I am going to do it. Even if I have to get up early, miss out on sleep, etc. My physical health is not as important as my relationship with God. That said, I believe that getting this in place will make the rest of life fall into place. After all, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).

So what decision are you making this week? Please use the linky widget below, or post about it in the comments. Read this for more information on how this link-up is supposed to work.

In the last few days, I have been doing a lot of introspection. I won’t go into all the details (I don’t have time to do that, and you probably don’t have time to read it!), but let me see if I can summarize a little.

I’ve been taking the All Power Seminar. If you haven’t heard of it, you should go check it out. If you let it, it will change your life. It is probably the major reason for all my introspection lately.

On day 25, my assignment was to list my ultimate end values, then put them in order of importance the way they are in my life right now (not how they should be). That is hard! Think about it. When you think of values, you might think about things like God, husband, children, a nice home, money, etc. But most of those are not ultimate values. For instance, I married my husband for love, security, and pleasure, among other things. I don’t find pleasure in cleaning the home, but I do it because it makes my husband happy, and his happiness translates into pleasure and love for me. Listing ultimate end values is a lot harder than listing the things we do every day and then putting them on a priority. This has to do with who we are as a person.

I just did it this morning. And I’m not liking who I am.

Thankfully, I don’t have to stay the way I am! Praise God!

But it has made me stop and take a look at why I do what I do. Why do I blog? Why do I spend as little time in the kitchen as I can? Why do I find myself telling my daughter, “Just a minute” 5 times when all she wants is for me to read a story? Not just looking at the behavior but at the underlying motive is, well, it’s painful, but it helps me understand who I really am, and what I need to change.

So speaking of blogging… I haven’t figured it out totally. What I do know is that until I figure out exactly what my goal is, I may not do a lot of blogging for a while. At least, not as much as I have been doing the last couple of weeks. I want this blog to glorify God, and it can’t if I put it ahead of the more important things in life, such as my relationship with God, my children, and my health.

Recently I posted a survey about my blog, then made it “sticky” so that it would be at the top of the page. I only had one entry, and the answers really made me think, because I wasn’t posting much of what that reader wanted to see most here. I wish I had had more (it’s still open, by the way), but it did give me food for thought.

So what about you? What are your ultimate goals and values in life? What drives you? Think about it, and feel free to share if you wish.

After my first post last week about my son’s eczema, I realized that I should really start a separate blog for this topic. There are a lot of reasons for my decision, not the least of which is that I would like to target readers that might not be interested in all the other things I write about on this blog.

I went all out and bought a domain and everything. So go check out My Baby Has Eczema, and please share it with anyone who has a baby or young child with eczema!

Whenever something I post on that site is relevant to my readers here (for example, another installment in the story I started last week), I will post a link here on my blog, so you can follow it from here.

In the process of making the decision to start a completely separate blog, I learned some great information that any blogger who is thinking about a second blog should consider with regards to buying a new domain and the alternatives. I sent it to my favorite learning-about-blogging blog, Blogelina.com, and you can read it here.

Blogelina.com is a great resource for blogging moms. I find myself going there whenever I have questions about how to make my blog better. If you are a mom blogger, I recommend that you subscribe to her site. No matter what your goal in blogging is, there is something for everyone, which means there is something for you!

By douglasleemiller on Flickr

It’s the end of the year, and time to think about New Year’s resolutions. I haven’t been one to make a lot of resolutions; some year I don’t even bother to make any at all. But this week I read a couple of blogs that made me think about setting goals for next year. Caroline at The Modest Mom blog talked about several goals she has for the new year. Sarah at Sarah’s Hearts Home reviewed the goals she made last year and shared how she had had succeeded–or not. So I have been inspired to make a list of things I would like to accomplish this next year, and I want to share it with you. (Note about the picture: I wanted a picture, and I just couldn’t resist this one! You should click on it and read the caption under it!)

First Month’s Goals

These are things I would like to focus on during the first month of the year–my top priorities:

Work on obedience with the kids. This will mean keeping them with me more and following through when I issue commands to be sure that they are executed. Gislaine specifically needs to learn to deal with disappointments and to willingly obey the first time, quickly and cheerfully. To accomplish this, I plan on helping her by practicing proper responses to problematic situations, to help her learn how to react instead of just letting her react however she wants.

Make and keep the home more organized. I have gotten a good start on it–I promise to update the office decluttering project soon, but so far it’s coming along.

Go to the gym or walk at least 4 days a week. Just basically more exercise, and that’s how I plan to make it happen.

Spend more time in personal devotions. The next goal is the key to this one; when I can’t get up early, I want to learn how to take time during the day to connect to God.

Go to bed before 10:00 every night.

Have more consistent morning worship. I guess I always thought of this as the husband’s job, and it is so hard to stop my day once it is started… But my husband leaves home just as the kids are waking up most days, so having him lead out in morning worship most days is not practical. I’m not exactly sure how I am going to do this, but I am going to pray about it and then just do something–even if it’s just a song, a prayer, and reading a Bible story. This is very important.

Not get online until the important housework is done

Watch the Goallpower.com seminar. This looks interesting. If I really like it, I may blog about it later.

Wow! That seems like a lot of things to do in January. But some of them are not too involves (like bedtime) and some I have already started (like being more organized), so we wlll see how it goes. I’ll have to post an update at the end of January to let you know how I’m doing–and to help myself see where I need to focus more.

Second Month’s Goals

Come February I would like to add the following items to my 2011 goals:

Structure the kids’ days more so I can keep them with me more. This means that instead of saying, “Go play,” I will try to come up with an activity they can do near me. This will require some creativity and probably some sacrifice on my part, but I know it can be done.

Spend more time playing with the kids. This is one way of binding their hearts to mine. I haven’t done it enough lately.

Get my monthly and semi-annual cleaning on track. This means all the lists of things that need to be done on a not-so-regular basis will get incorporated into my iPod’s to-do list program. That way things will come up on my daily to-do list so I can remember to do them. This will include things like washing windows, dusting baseboards, cleaning the light diffusing bowls, etc. I have lists already made up, but I need to get them where I will actually see them.

Blog more consistently, at the same time limiting my time online. I want to post 3-4 times a week at least, but I need to focus on what I am doing online and avoid surfing and wasting time. I need to plan my posts, too, so that I can be more efficient with my time online.

Eat more vegetables. I like veggies, but they get expensive and sometimes I just forget to eat them. So I’m making it a goal to try to get more of them in my diet–to just be more consistent about making sure they are on the table to eat every day.

Goals for the Rest of the Year

The rest of my list is more of a want-to-do, or else a seasonal activity that isn’t something I could start in the winter. So once I get the above under control, or when summer comes, I want to keep these things in mind:

Try at least 2 new recipes every month. I have gotten into a rut of just fixing the same ol’ stuff all the time. I need to put in some variety once in a while. But I’m not going to stress about it in January; my monthly menu is already made up.

Plant and maintain a small garden. I got gardened out as a kid (my mom once had a 1,000 square foot garden!), but I really want to have some home-grown delights. And hubby has spent so much time and effort on getting rid of the blackberries that overran the garden area…

Spend more time outside on nice days. The previous goal should help this one. And now that I have an iPod, I could go out and sit under a tree and write blogs while the children play nearby. But that won’t be happening for a few months yet!

Knit Gislaine a sweater and everyone some socks. I learned to knit before learning any other related craft. But now it seems so slow compared to crocheting or sewing. But I love homemade wool socks and found some expensive wool at the Goodwill for cheap, so I really should do it. I even found good free patterns online, and my mom gave me a whole set of needles, so I have no legitimate excuses.

Do the bulk of my sewing in the winter when it’s too cold to be outside. Last summer I spent too much time sewing and got burned out by winter, when it’s too cold to be outside. I don’t want that to be the start of a trend. Which means I need to start figuring out what I need to make for next summer soon.

So there is my list. I will review the first two items over the next two months, and then the whole thing at the end if the year.

So what are your resolutions/goals for the new year? I’d love to hear them. If you have blogged about them, be sure to post the link in your comment.

Yesterday I shared some of the things I did to fortify myself against failure in the Christian walk. Besides making the obvious commitment to daily Bible study and prayer, I chose a prayer/accountability partner to encourage and pray for me, and to help keep me accountable in certain areas. I feel this is important because, as I shared, sin thrives in darkness and concealment, but loses much of it’s power in the light (See John 3:19, 20).

Today I want to share how the Lord took me deeper. You see, it was good that I stopped resisting Him. But just saying “Lord, take my life” is not enough. There must be a continual surrender to God’s will. Here is where my past failures came from. I would say, “Lord, take my heart.” But then when He would ask me to give up some cherished idol, I would resist. And that resistance would sooner or later separate me from God.

So within a day of my initial surrender, I began to sense the Lord asking me to lay some things on the altar. Things like how much time I spend on the internet. (Yes, with it in the house, and especially with the iPod, it is a very real and powerful temptation again.)

So I asked my prayer partner to help keep me accountable and pray for me in this area.

Next I realized that I had let my eBay business take over my life. I needed to spend less time on it and more time working with my children. So I laid that on the altar as well.

Now don’t get me wrong. I still struggle with my time online and to an extent with eBay (some days it is more of a challenge than others); but I am trying to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s call to my heart, telling me when I’ve done enough or need to do something else. It’s nice to be able to make some spending money, but I cannot let the love of money (or even the need for it) control me.

Another area, related to the one, is the issue of how I use my spare time. I am beginning to realize that how we use our spare moments says a lot about who we are.

There is this blog that I was reading. It was funny and mostly harmless, but I had become somewhat obsessed with it. I wanted to read all the archives (over 2 years’ worth of almost daily posts), and had only a few months’ worth to go when the Lord brought it up to me. He pointed out that not only was I not learning anything of eternal value there, but it occasionally had content that was not really appropriate for a Christian to view–content that I would be embarrassed to be caught viewing if Jesus were to walk into the room. Since I had so few posts left (relatively speaking) to finish it, at first I thought I would just look at a post here and there in my spare time. But I began to see the negative effect of even moderate viewing (as opposed to sitting down for an hour to read a couple months’ worth, like I had done), and the Lord called to my heart again.

This time He asked me to surrender the whole blog, to be willing never to go there again. And at the same time, He also asked me not to check my email every time I had a spare moment–or my texting program, or whatever other little innocent thing that I might do with my iPod when I had a few moments to myself. Not that I could never use a spare moment to check my email, but I realized that I needed to try to use the majority of them for something of more eternal value. Like read a Bible promise, or take a moment to pray for someone or something, or read a couple of paragraphs from an inspirational book. So I surrendered the blog and the use of my spare time. And I have found that doing this has led me to love the things of the Lord more. It also is helpful to keep my mind focused on the Lord, and to make up for a not-as-long-as-I-would-have-liked quiet time in the morning. And I don’t miss that blog. Not one bit. I don’t think I’ll ever go back.

One side benefit (if you could call it that) of guarding my spare moments has been an increased sensitivity to the Spirit’s voice speaking to my conscience. As I open my heart up to God, inviting Him into more and more of my day, I begin to hear Him speaking to me in a very personal way. For instance, the other night I was typing this very post on my iPod, and when the time came to turn it off and go to bed, there was a temptation to just keep going with it under the covers, where it wouldn’t bother my husband. After all, I was doing something spiritual, not just reading stories like I had done in the past (yes, under the covers, late into the night, I am ashamed to say). But the Lord called to my conscience. He reminded me that even a good thing late at night was a bad thing. And He asked me to surrender and leave the iPod on the nightstand. I surrendered. And even though I didn’t get to sleep for at least an hour, I stayed firm to my resolve, and I didn’t regret it. I knew I would be able to pick up my train of thought and finish the post without any problem. And I did. I doubt you can tell where exactly I stopped. (Hint: It was in this paragraph.)

As I continue to spend time in God’s Word, and to listen to God’s voice directing me, I will be come more sensitive to His leading in my life. But if I choose to go against what I know to be right, then I will let go of God’s hand and be right back where I was before. Or worse. I don’t want that to happen again!

There is so much more I could write in this series, but I think this is a good place to stop. Thank you for reading. I pray you have been challenged.

Tomorrow I will share about another book that has made a big impact on me spiritually. So watch for that post.

Last weekend we went to the Empowered Living Ministries camp meeting in Hood River, a little over an hour from our place. It was a real blessing! If you’ve never heard of them, you should check them out. I’ll be posting more about this later.

But for now, let’s just say that the impressions I received at this camp meeting, combined with the lack of Internet at home, have led to some drastic changes in my priorities. I will not be having a post every day on this blog. It is not practical for me. I realized that before the move, I had been putting my blog before almost everything, including my Lord, my husband, my children, and my home. Now I am going to put those things in their proper place and my blog below them.

I also realized that I had not asked God’s permission to even have a blog. I think I was scared that He would say no. But I finally did. I surrendered it to Him, ready to quit if He said so. But He didn’t say I had to quit–just to put it at the bottom of my priority list.

So what does this mean practically? There will be fewer posts, but they will have more quality in them. And I will have time for the things that really matter.

Soon I will be writing more book reviews, so watch for those! And thank you for visiting.