As the New Year rolled around, Jon and I began talking about things we wanted to do more intentionally. One of them is read / Bible Study. To that end, we just purchased a book by Donald Miller called "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story." He wrote the book, "Blue Like Jazz," which Jon really enjoyed and which I intend to read. As we read the book and discuss it together, I hope that we can uncover ways that we can "live a better story" as a individuals, a couple, and as a family.

For Christmas, I received a book from my sister-in-law. One afternoon the kids were out front swinging, so I brought my book out to read it on the front steps. Amara came up to me and said, "Mom, I didn't know that you liked to read books." She adores reading; a passion I want to encourage. Similar to my purpose in running -- to set a good example for the kids -- I need to follow that mantra with books as well. I do love to read -- I just haven't taken the time to do it in over a decade.

Boy... write it like that and it seems like an eternity!

In my journey to live a better story, there are a few things I hope to do...

1) Journal it. I've never been much of a journaler or a writer -- however, I do believe that there's power in the written word. If you write it, you do it. I hope/plan to write and/or blog as I do each of the items below.

2) Bible Study and Christian Reading - I want to read more books, but I want them to be books with a purpose. I want them to be encouraging, inspirational, and challenging of my status quo. I want to become a better person because of the books that I read. That said, I need to also focus on personal Bible Study, not using books, no matter how Christian, to take the place of the Bible.

3) Date Nights - I want to be more intentional about Date Nights both with Jon as well as with each child. I have some willing participants at church who would be willing to do a "child swap." I need to pursue that more intentionally so that we each can benefit from date nights at least once a month. For each child, we've begun a list of things we'd like to do together - some free, some cheap, some a bit more of a splurge. I did a couple "date days" with my daughter over Christmas, which were really more like errands, but they meant the world to her. I need to be intentional about spending one-on-one time with each of them.

4) Eating and Exercise - During October and November last year, I was very intentional about eating and exercising as I prepared to run a Half Marathon. I felt great about my finish, my performance, and the impact it had on how my clothes fit. :) However, like in the past, once I was done, I stopped being intentional. I've signed up for another race in March, and I've got to recapture the efforts both in my eating and my exercising. This is not only a great example for the kids, but I know it pleases Jon, and I feel so much better about myself and life in general when I'm taking good care of myself! Not to mention, my vitals are improved -- when I took our company's health assessment, my bad cholesterol was so low it didn't register (I have had high cholesterol in the past), and the assessor said he'd never seen such strong numbers! (Of course... he may have just been telling me that to make me feel good!)

5) Relationships - At our New Year's Day church service, we were challenged to pray over one area of our life where we could stand some work, and ask God to help us improve. I wrote down the broad category of relationships. Starting with God; my relationship with Jesus Christ is sometimes pretty one-sided.... and I'm not talking about me putting forth the effort. I know He's always there, but I'm often lax and don't show up. This also will include my relationship with Jon. We did a small group called "Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage" last semester and really were surprised by some of the thing we learned about each other, and also were shown ways to be more intentional about the "little things" so that we could live life more smoothly. My relationship with my kids is probably the most "solid" on a day to day basis because they're still young - while I anticipate those relationships to become rocky through the teen years, I also know that the best way to minimize that is to invest the time now -- hence the date nights. And finally, relationships with friends -- I've always had a lot of acquaintences, but not a lot of friends. I'm good at keeping people at a distance, because I've convinced myself that if they knew the "true me" they wouldn't like me. Get behind me satan - that's not a lie worth believing. It's a lie that leads to loneliness. In our new home, new church, I've met some wonderful people who I believe will become great friends. I need to be intentional in those relationships to nurture the friendships.

So how does this all look on the blog?

Honestly... I have no idea.

I'm really not feeling the pull to blog right now, and in my mind, I kind of prefer the crude paper / pen approach. I'm not sure though, because typing is so much easier and faster. So it may be a bit of both.

At this point, I'm leaning on "If you write it, you do it" -- so here it is.

That... and my friend Reese told me to blog again. :)

We'll see where it goes from here!