2013: What Matters?

My backdated 2012 review post is here.

In recent weeks, I've really been thinking about what is important. I guess I have been pondering these things since October both with the women's retreat and Dad's death. In theory, that is an easy list to compile: Faith, Family, Friends, Food - done, right? Oh, and fitness and finances and home. So, in reality, it doesn't come down to a short, simple list.

I have pretty much avoided reading others' 2013 lists and goals and resolutions until I fleshed out some of my own. What is important to me and MH and our family? For 2013, I want those things to be my focus. Some ideas have more flesh than others, but they are all swimming around in my mind at one time or another.

Faith - first and foremost, as a Christian family, prayer must be present in our home. MH and I must make efforts to demonstrate prayer to our boys and to pray for our boys, each other, our marriage, and our nation.

Family - my family is THE most important thing to me. As a Christian, it is something I need to work on. God should be first, but in my honest heart of hearts, my family takes top billing. I don't want my family to ever doubt their importance to me. Not one of them should ever take a back seat to FB or any other social media. I must make an effort to control my own screen time. I recently deleted the FB app from my phone. I still get emails if I am tagged or get a message, but otherwise, FB is not in my face begging me to click it all day long. I have already found myself reading books with paper pages in all my (FB)free time. I like it.

Also, MH is my rock. He needs to know it and never doubt it. We must make an effort to reconnect often and keep our marriage and relationship fresh and strong. A good starting point is monthly date nights.

Part of family to me is remembering. This blog is my place to remember. 2012 brought some positive change (and readers) to this space, and I hope 2013 does more of the same.

Friends - I love them. I want them to know it. I have real, living, breathing actual friends. I want to see their faces and hear their voices more often.

I have friends reading this who I've never met. I would love to develop some of those relationships, too.

Food - I love it. It's good. Those two things do not mean that I should eat all of it all the time. It's time to get rid of the sweet tooth and enjoy a salad every so often. I love salad when I eat it, so why does it feel like a punishment when I think of eating one? This is a goal: lose 10% of my current body weight and maintain that loss once it happens. Coincidentally, 10% loss would put me into a healthy weight range and I'd be at my goal weight from my initial 2006 weight loss.

Fitness - I loved boot camp in July and August. I loved learning to run in the Fall. I love having energy to play with Tot. I dislike hip pain. I will ease back into fitness and set some further goals when I have figured out whether or not my hip is going to cooperate with  me.

Finances/home - budget, plan. Sounds easy. We really buckled down to get out from under debt. Now it's time to look to the future. Future is twofold: 2013 immediate future and then the future after 2013.
Giving and saving are two important 2013 focuses for us. Some travel is on our list, but we also want to update some appliances. We want to build a shop. We want to reorganize and declutter and feel at home in our home. We also want to remodel, but that will come later. Perhaps if we can accomplish the other things, remodeling won't feel so much like a pressing need.

Like every year before it and every year to come, 2013 will have it's ups and downs. We hope that 2013 allows Tot to attend his first theme park and our family to snow ski. We would love to be cooking on a gas stove before summer. We pray that we can enter 2014 remembering 2013 in a fond way despite it's inevitable downs. Ultimately, if we've made effort to show others, friends and strangers alike, that they are important to us, it will have been a successful year.