New Life - Begin with The End in Mind

Baby Gabie is here! Today marks two months since her birth.

Gabie entered the world quickly – the doctor didn’t even have time to make it to the hospital and my lovely doula caught baby girl with only Michael in the room. Ofcourse I begged for an epidural at one point, but labor was too fast to allow for that. Ironically, I prayed for a natural delivery without pain killers, and God sure answered that one.

Life has been moving full swing since Gabie’s arrival. Michael has gone to Thailand and back for work, and we’ve hosted some family.  Gabie fits right in and lets me hold and feed her in the strangest of places (like weaving through the mountains in the back of a four by four) as we live our daily life. She just trust that everything will be alright.

As time continues to show its true colors of relativity (at least that’s what Einstein says, that time is relative) – I find myself focusing more on priorities and what type of adventures our family could have on the horizons. Michael and I asked a couple from church to mentor us and our first meeting was last week. They talked about a book – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey– and shared wisdom from two habits.

Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind and,

Habit 3: Put first things first.

As you may have gathered from the last blog about my unpredictable life patterns, beginning with the end in mind can be a bit of a challenge when we (Michael and I) don’t have much of a clue of where we are going.

For starters we have some big goals in mind, but we don’t have it all sorted out. We don’t know how long we’ll live in Costa Rica, we don’t know what we are working towards as a family, and we really have let a lot of big life decisions happen to us. It is only when a job change presents itself that we shift, or it could be a new life that makes us switch up habits (or homes). But us, Michael and I, choosing a path deliberately – we have yet to do that.

And to be honest, it feels strange to be allowed to make a plan. I’m realizing that I am comfortable with the unknown because then I feel like God has more room to guide us. My spirituality is attached to spontaneous direction. Yet that mentality makes it harder to settle, harder to commit, harder to set routines, and harder in general, to raise a family in the long run. So as much as Michael and I have an adverse reaction to planning anything long term. We’ve decided it may be time to sit down and sort some things out – holding it loosely with the verse in mind – “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps,” Proverbs 16:9.  I used to think that verse was a good justification for less planning, but I now realize that it’s not saying “don’t make plans, because they’ll be ruined anyways,” but rather, God is just letting us know who is in control lest we forget.

So let’s do it! Let’s begin with the end in mind. To new life and new endings! This week Michael and I are asking ourselves the questions - what do our hypothetical, desirable, “this would be cool,” endings look like? In health, friendships, finances, with the girls education, living, making an impact, ALL OF IT. Where are we headed anyways? So I’ll beg the question - where are you headed, too?