Happy New Year and My Word

Happy 2018 everybody!! 

I just love new starts.  New planners.  New goals.  Big dreams.  Plans.  Changes.  All of it. 

I have never felt more sure of my NY goals than I do this year.  Picking one word seems to be the thing to do and this is my first year to pin it down to that ONE THING. 

My word this year is 

REST

Our little love QBall went home to his family before Christmas and it has been just us.  No more fosters.  And a chance to see what our family looks like complete with our 2 newly adopted sons.  We had a crazy intense year of 3 toddler boys all under 3.  Then watching them grow a little older and into new things.  Then the highs of adoption and the low of sending "our baby" home. 

And we are tired. 

We all need a hard re-set.  A season of rest.  To sleep and think and read and be quiet.  To reconnect as a family.  I need to get back to cooking and eating the way I like.  To get out of survival mode.  To stop and listen and look people in the eye...and smile.  To breathe.  Rest. 

I'm pretty good at going and doing.  In fact, I feel guilty when I take a nap because it seems so lazy.  So I'm still trying to figure out what it will look like.  But I figure it will be saying No to the things that stretch me thin and make me feel overextended.  Making sleep a priority (with no guilt).  Doing the things that fill me up....reading, a project, cleaning my house, reading to my kids, walking with my neighbor, cooking, writing letters to my grandmother, and blogging. 

But then what?  Because I'm pretty sure that if I'm not careful it'll become boring and feel lazy after awhile.  So I don't know yet.  I don't know about our future in foster care or what the year holds for my older kids and how we will need to support them.  I want to trust God with it all. 

In the meantime, my kids have been sleeping more, playing more, and Xboxing more.  This whole year of rest is off to good start.