goodbye eighteen

I'm turning nineteen tomorrow. I'm leaving eighteen behind. and honestly, it makes me sad and I have cried about it.

so much has happened over the past year since I turned eighteen. the first few months of being eighteen were the absolute worst months of my life. I cried so much in those first few months, over personal issues, family issues, church issues. issues that no one outside of my immediate family knows about. issues that I couldn't tell other people about and issues that I didn't want to tell other people about. 

but then, when June came along, life got a hundred and eighty times better. in fact, the whole year got better. and I wouldn't change my eighteenth year for anything. because all those tears and rough days taught me lessons that I won't forget. 

they taught me to forgive, to move on, to depend on Jesus when others let you down. they taught me that my family loves me way more than I ever realized, that they will stand by me when the whole world is throwing stones. and honestly, it was worth it. 

bye, eighteen. thanks for the lessons. for the trip to slovakia. for the friendships formed. for the hours worth of good music. for the hugs. for the laughs. for the money made. for the delicious food. for the time spent with my favorite people.

thanks for being better than i had ever imagined.

goal is a four letter word

Tonight after supper I said, "I need to write a blog post about goals." Mom (without missing a beat, of course) said, "Goal is a four letter word." :) We laughed about it, and I told her I was going to use it in the post. (pictures are from a 10th grade school day :)

Goals. It's something I've been meaning/wanting to write about, and just haven't yet. This past year I wasn't really diligent about my goals, but I also didn't really set goals that were attainable. My goals were things like: finish writing my novel, learn to run a home, learn to cook... things like that. Those aren't goals that you can really attain in a year.

This year, I want to set goals that I can actually work towards. In Sunday school this past Sunday, Mrs. Claudia told us she was going to set a spiritual goal, a physical goal, a relational goal and a professional goal. So I thought about that. Here's the ideas I had:

spiritual goal: spend at least a few minutes every day this year in God's word. Whether that means reading a few quick verses or spending an hour digging into what He has to say. Just spending time getting to know him better!

physical goal: work out. period. I love the way I feel when I'm working out. I just feel good, and who doesn't like that?? =) I want to start running again. A good friend of mine reminded me on Monday that back in 2010 I couldn't run a step and he and his brother helped me learn to run. I ended up running 30 minutes at a time by the next year. But then I got slack. So now I'm jumping back on the bandwagon...er...treadmill.

relational goal: get closer to my siblings. work on mentoring the girls at church.

professional goal: I'll be graduating this summer. I want to be a good student for this last little bit. My goal here is to just work my tail off til graduation, and actually feel good about it when I'm done.

So those are my goals for 2013. I'll keep you updated. Hopefully at the end of every month we'll have a little goal post. You remind of that, okay? So I told you about my goals. What are yours??