Would you like to make decisions to make 2015 intentional?
Every New Year for over a decade I have taken a day to reflect and answer these questions. The result is an amazing amount of insight and help towards living the life I have dreamed of.
Honestly, the life I live today is the one I wrote about whilst doing this exercise ten years ago.
Join me by downloading these Change Reflection Questions and take time to dream this New Year.
Have a great day
Every, single time I hear Otis Redding sing, I want to lay down on my driveway and stare at the stars. When I was eighteen, I had a little obsession with Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison and a vinyl record crush on Otis Redding. (One day if I ever get little cat or dog for my family they will be called Otis and Van.)
There is something about a little soul music, a glass of wine and a fruit mince-pie that eases Christmassy goodness into my life. If I am feeling a little sad in May or April, you can secretly finding me putting honey in my coffee and cinnamon on top of the foam and cranking out some Christmas tunes.
My all time favourite Otis tune is White Christmas, but Merry Christmas, comes a close second.
When I hear this song, I find myself nostalgic remembering all those Christmases when I dreamed of having my own family. It is like every Christmas I was reminded what I didn’t have and I so desperately wanted to find it.
Otis makes me so very happy but at the same time a little sad. I feel sad because from the age of eighteen till thirty something, I was single. As the years moved on, the nostalgia increased and I watched everyone hanging out with their families and I so desperately longed for one of my own.
Year after year, Christmas Eve was the hardest. I dreamed of a white christmas somewhere romantic sometime, I thought about pretending to be Santa Claus late at night with my husband and I watched the Christmas Carols on Television with tears streaming down my face, more times than I would like to admit.
Therefore, I will never take for granted how long I waited and prayed for my little family at Christmas. I will never forget and I will always be grateful for the little things, even when Christmas with children is so very different to my vivid imaginations.
Otis you remind me, how long I waited.
How long I waited for my Mr.
How long I waited for my littles.
How long I waited to read the christmas golden books I collected year after year.
This year each night in December as I read my little man my Christmas book collection, I will be reminded that good things indeed come to those who wait.
Ps: I made you a Soul Christmas Spotify list. Merry days.
Even though we live two clicks from the sea, each and every day when I look out my kitchen window I stare at a grey, boring, ugly fence.
Good morning, hello fence.
Olive trees awash the sky behind it and each new day become my forecasting friends. Bendy trees equal ‘Stay inside weather’, swaying trees; ‘it’s perfect beach-combing weather’ or when stillness pervades, ‘I must rush outside as the weather is sublime.’
Washing dishes is my household nemesis. Maybe you struggle with laundry? The floor? or maybe making the bed.
If my sink is clean I am calm then I am too.
Back to my original thread though, my ugly fence. You see, if you take three paces to the right you are out of my kitchen and officially in the hallway/lounge-room/playroom/craft-room and general assembly hall.
If my kitchen sink was where my front door is located, (in an around the corner type of way) instead of seeing that ugly, grey fence as I fight with my nemesis, I would see the ocean.
Although we live two clicks from the sea and the only place where my little old Hawaiian beach flat can see our dear friend the ocean is from our front door. The only place when you are standing at it, you are leaving the space.
My body builder has given me a little remedy to delight my senses as I wash our tribes utensils. A beautiful window shelf, that I am able to dry dishes on, plant herbs in and currently swoon over little flowers from. It belongs more in a French kitchen than a Hawaiian beach flat, but anyway back to my little story.
I often stand as I am washing up wondering, who designed this flat and why didn’t they place the kitchen closer to the ocean and create a view? Retrospect is a wonderful and all-consuming disease. Those deep moments of ‘Why didn’t I’, ‘I should have’ and company.
It is not until life teaches us little lessons that we have the foresight to make these decisions. The bible calls it wisdom. The world calls it Karma. I call it life.
Life teaches us a plethora of information if we are willing to slow down and breathe it in. I don’t believe any decision we make is unrepairable. I believe that all things are working together for good, for those who love and trust The Lord.
Mostly I meet people who are stuck because they are unwilling to make changes, afraid if they make a mistake.
The kitchen window overlooking the grey, ugly fence, is a monumental mistake in my books. The architect wouldn’t have known though that one day in 40 years time, a creative Mama would spend half her day at that sink, washing a whole families eating utensils. A Mama who loves to cook and is addicted to hospitality.
Foresight or wisdom.
However my dear internet friend, window sills can be built.
Heck! We are even contemplating shifting the front door, the windows and the kitchen sink, just so I can have my little ocean view.
Just make a decision to keep moving forward.
This coming New Year, why don’t you make time with me and download this change reflection pages and contemplate a little shift, two clicks to the right.
You may just find a whole new view.
Every Evening before my eyes slowly, giddily start to shut I try to read something.
Anything.
Even if it is just one line from my old and rifled bible. (currently loving Matthew)
A few sentences from a non-fiction that has caught my attention. (currently weaving through the hands free mama)
A flick through my latest novel and even sometimes just a sniff of my latest borrow from my local library. (I borrowed Let it snow from a friend and have The Gift partially read and The Longest Ride waiting)
Since embarking on novice motherhood and marriage the greatest loss in my life has been hours of uninterrupted book obsession. I can’t sit for hours in a cafe, I can’t lay on the couch and get lost in an-others world.
I can every evening, before my tired and weary body starts to fade, turn the television off and read something.
Even just one line.
I read a quote recently that said this
‘Any writer who doesn’t read, cannot be a writer indeed.’
Anon.
So tonight, even though I have been awake since 3.30am when Miss four months thought the sun was up and so I am.
The very last thing I will do is seek wisdom from someone else.
Every Single Morning, I do something first thing before I do anything else.
Before I scrambled for my coffee,
Before I reach for the remote and switch on the morning news,
Before I spend time brushing my teeth in a bid to wake myself up.
It is a weird little thing.
A little secret between my sheets and I.
Every single morning I do it, even before I hold my breath hoping my newborn might actually snooze for a few seconds longer.
I do it before I reach for my phone and scroll aimlessly through social media searching for something that might inspire my day.
It is a little weird and you might not like me anymore after you find out what it is.
Something only my pillow knows about, something I have done since I was a little girl.
You see, I am not what one would call a morning person. I wish I could spring out of bed and take on the day with fierce tenacity but I am the sort of person who needs to be convinced out of bed.
I haven’t needed an alarm for the last three years, because my son has been my human foghorn. Even before he yells loudly ‘Wake up Mum’. I do something each and every morning.
Todays question is this;
What is something you do every morning?
Every morning, as the sun pokes its head through the dawn, I lay in bed surfacing from a dream and I open one eye.
Just one.
Not both.
It is like I am lifting the covers off my sleep and saying hello to the day.
As I lay with one eye open, my mind floods with questions like ‘No, it can’t be morning already can it?’ ‘Can I have one more minute of sleep?’ ‘What happened, is it morning already?’.
Then I close my eye. Maybe closing it helps me hold onto the possibility that my soft embrace of dreams and blankets could last just a little longer.
Then I open my one eye again. I start to listen to the ferry that docks every morning ready for its days passengers and listen to the waves that lap the shore. I try to ignore to the squawking birds that reside in the olive grove next door. It is in this half eyed moment, that I take a deep breath and greet the day.
A one-eyed greeting, that says ‘Although I wish I had another moment, even a nano second of sleep, today is a new day and I will rejoice in its newness.‘
There is something so precious and simple about the morning.
The routine that helps us remember our blessings and to count its potential.
Each and every morning.
Even if you wake a little one-eyed, like me, let’s remember that every new day that dawns has the potential to be better than the last.
When our days are dark and difficult, colour can be found in the dark. If you take the time, even with just one eye to find it.
