Wednesday, January 2, 2008

My Word for the Year

Our family took the picture above for our Christmas picture this year. It's amazing how difficult it is to get two children to look in the direction of the camera and smile. I can't imagine how people with 4 or 5+ children manage a Christmas picture. I guess they don't try to do it by themselves, with a timer. Anyway, on to the purpose of this blog entry...
I have picked a word for the year! I was visiting a blog by Scrapbook Artist Ali Edwards (http://www.aliedwards.typepad.com/) and she wrote about choosing a word for the year. As I thought about it, I realized that without being intentional about it, I did actually have a word like that last year. Last year throughout my daily activities, the word "authenticity" kept popping up, and it became my goal to be authentic and real in all of my interactions with others. As a matter of fact, that will continue to be something I think about and aspire to.
It didn't take me long at all to realize what this years' word was going to be. I am in the midst of planning out my year, designing classes, etc. Naturally, I am thinking about how to balance my life with my family, my faith, my responsibilities, and my artistic ventures. Last year, I ended up overbooking myself at various times and creating stress for myself and my family. So...PRIORITIZE...is a word that will be helping to shape my decisions and plans for 2008.
It is amazing how much just a little bit of focus can change our decisions and outlook on life. It will be so interesting to look back at the end of this year and gauge how choosing to "prioritize" has changed the outcome of my year.
Blessings to each of you,
Valonda

1 comment:

Blessed Mom said...

your kids are so big! When did that happen???????? They are very sweet. :-)

Oh & the answer to the question is, people with 7 children just hope for one picture where everyone is looking semi towards the camera & no one is crying, running away or trying to dump something on a siblings head LOL. I have a family picture from Easter on my blog, you can see on it that we settle for less than perfection. Hey at least when they are grown up we have proof they weren't adopted ;-).