So last week wasn’t a total bust, and I haven’t avoided writing my Friday post. Truth is I have been incredibly busy for days as I celebrated my 50th. 

My family surprised me with a party of many close friends and family. 6 of them stayed with us over the weekend and my oldest son stayed through today.  I felt loved on, cared for, and honored to have the gift of such relationships in my life. 

Now, I’m still recovering from my exhaustion after so much fun! 😂 The great part is that I got some great exercise in the process.

 I had walked the dog some last week, but I hadn’t made it to our fitness center. However, I had the chance to hike twice in the last few days and yesterday I did some tiring yard work. Therefore, overall, I’m calling it a win in my quest to increase my activity level. 

To switch my focus to this week, my plan is to make it to the fitness center twice and then get cardio as many times as possible. I appreciate your prayers if you think of me. 

“Today I saw a beauty contest brief, between a rainbow and an autumn leaf.”  

The juxtaposition of these contrasting beauties describe well my life this week. My emotions have been a roller coaster since I wrote last week, but overall, it’s been filled with much joy. 

I find I’m generally in a much better place interiorly than I’ve been for much of my adult life.  There are more evidences of happiness in my heart, even though I carry a great sadness of which I’m aware most of the time.    The difference is that I’m learning to  accept the presence of that sadness as a part of my reality, feeling the undercurrent of it, not fighting it but also not allowing it to pull me under. 

As for my goals for exercise this week, I would say i was up and down with it, as well. However, I did walk three times and go to my workout place once to do the weights. Next week, I’m keeping my goal of 3 days of walking and 2 of weights. 

If you think of me during the week, please lift me up in prayer.  Godbis at work in me. I know that I’m finding that my joy these days is often mixed with legitimate happiness, and I’m so grateful to God for His transforming power at work in my life. 

Regrouping is something I’ve learned to do often the last couple of years. It doesn’t mean I’m starting all over from scratch.  It simply means that I’ve passed through one part of my journey and now a new path has emerged, so I need to re-work my plan in order to keep moving forward and not get stuck.  I’ve been in this re-grouping mode the last month or so. 

Making a move, getting settled and beginning new jobs are all natural causes for starting a new part of a journey.  I’m now at the point of feeling like my exterior circumstances are getting enough into a routine that I can refocus to my interior life. As I spoke of in my last blog post, my physical needs are going to be my new focus for the year ahead. 

I turn 50 in a couple weeks, so now is my time to enact my first steps in this part of my journey. To begin, I’m committing to writing here at least once/week, probably on Fridays. That starts now, with this post. 

My next step is to get exercising consistently back into gear. I have more of a routine starting to fall into place, therefore I believe I can begin to get into an exercise groove. I have mostly exercised consistently since I was a teen , but times of great change and chaos have interfered with this aspect of my life off and on as I’ve raised my kids. I exercise to feel better, mostly, and to be a good steward of this body God has loaned to me. It’s time to tackle re-establishing good habits and discipline in this area of my life. 

My commitment between now and next Friday is to go to my workout center twice and to walk, and/or bike, at home, 3 times.  This might be too much to start off , but fir now, that’s my goal. As October moves forward, this will be my focus, then food will be my objective for November.   

I would appreciate prayer support from any of you who read this. God bless you!