What Will My New Year Look Like?

First, an update
In the last blog post, Tears on Christmas Day, I shared about some families that we reached out to on Christmas Day to share food with them.  The response of readers has been so wonderful.  One couple, who have already helped this family a lot, are giving money for a bed and school uniforms and food for Grace, Pita and the kids.  Another family from Oregon has adopted Mama Saidi and her two little ones, giving $1,000 to build them a better house and provide some food, a mattress and some other necessities, and have committed to $20 each month to continue ensuring the health and welfare of the kids.  A church in Washington is preparing to take an offering to provide another food supplement for the other six families.

We are so excited to facilitate these gifts that will have such an impact on the lives of these vulnerable families!

Next, an admission
I have terrible discipline, but I recently read that most people wish they had better self discipline, so that made me feel a little better.  I know many people feel like New Year's resolutions are pointless, but I have the kind of personality which needs a reason and a significant point of start to make a change in my life.

One of my favorite authors, Gretchen Rubin, who has been frequently mentioned on this blog, wrote a book about forming habits called Better Than Before.  It's been out for a while, but I got bogged down trying to listen to it on audio when I really needed to sit down with my journal and take notes.  I've restarted reading it to boost the goal I made for 2016.  According to her Four Tendencies personality structure, I am an Obliger, which means that I am good at meeting others' expectations of me, but I am rubbish at meeting my own expectations of myself.  She is spot on, and I'll give you an example: When my husband is home, I pretty much bathe every day (laudable, I know), because he appreciates when I'm, y'know, clean and not stinky.  When Fred is away, though, I am hit-or-miss with the whole bathe every day thing.  (In a weak attempt to defend myself, bathing here is not just jumping in the shower.  It involves heating water on the stove and hauling it into the bathroom and bathing from a bucket with a cup.  Oh, and of course there are two toddlers who can't stand for me to be out of their eye line for more than one minute who also need to be bathed in warm water.)  Anyway, the point is that Fred's expectation of having a clean wife is stronger motivation for me than my own desire to not be grubby.

Finally, a goal
So this year, on New Year's Eve, I sat down and wrote a list of the things I am unsatisfied about in my life.  These are things I should be doing every day, but seem to take an enormous amount of discipline to get done.  When I looked at my list of 6-8 things, I realized that most of them could be incorporated into a better morning routine.  So my goal for 2016 is to create better habits in the morning,  I have a little checklist, and I'm incorporating some accountability to actually empower me to stick with my routine.  Six days in, I'm doing well, although the one factor that I thought would ensure my success--getting up earlier than my kids--is not working out.  My usually late-sleeping kids have decided that whatever time I wake up, they should wake up, so I'm dealing with a lot of static during the morning, trying to get them started well on their day at the same time as I'm reading my Bible and doing the other checklist things.

Anyway, that's what is going on around our house.  Kudos to all of you trying to make a positive change in your life right now, and if you need some accountability, let me know!