My God-Sized Dream: Finding Balance

Hi, friends.

I’m gonna start by repeating myself.

I am just so, so incredibly thankful to God and blessed to be part of the God-Sized Dream team. Each day I am encouraged, inspired, and challenged to grow closer to my Father by these amazing women. I just love them…and hearing about what God is doing in their hearts  and how their dreams are coming true is just the best.

Ok, on to book-writing.

I’ve shared the dream. To take my Indo stories…the blessings and the tough stuff, the best moments and the things that made me cry, all of them…and put them into one place.

My book.

I’m already calling it that…even if I don’t have a publisher yet.

I’ve been going through Holley Gerth‘s e-book short, The Do-What-You-Can-Plan: 21 Days to Making Any Area of Your Life Better.

To tell you that this book has been a blessing is an understatement. I feel like God is using it to give me clarity, focus…and amazing hope and expectation for what He is going to do in my heart and life.

I’ve known He wanted me to write the book for awhile now, and in my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-pretty-much-every-day, dive-in-headfirst, mind…I guess I figured I’d just sit down and tap out the words…and Voila!

Book.

That’s proven harder than I anticipated. Maybe we’ll just call it a reality check for someone who tends to live with her head bobbing in the clouds.

Holley stresses over and over in this book…small steps. One thing at a time. It will happen.

I SO needed to hear that…and hear it over and over and over. (Can I blame it on the ENFP in me? ;))

So twoish weeks ago I sat down and started to write out the small steps…the shorter-term goals…I felt were necessary to reaching my goal. I was desperately needing to find some type of balance…because I’m not just writing a book. I’m also a wife and a full-time mommy…I love my husband and daughter, and they deserve the best from me…not my “left over” time.

So here are the goals I came up with…one step at a time. (I only had to technically share one or two, but hey…I’m an overachiever. Or, I just like to talk. :))

1. Write out a plan for the book. My book is divided into three sections. Seventeen shorter chapters per section. I needed a plan or outline…some way to put it on paper so I could see where I was heading, to keep track of progress, and to actually see my chapter ideas. I’m finding that, due to the length a book should be…I will probably need to add a few chapters. I don’t think coming up with ideas for that will be hard, so I’m encouraged. And I’ve (mostly) finished this part.

2. Have a somewhat-flexible writing schedule…aka: certain days/certain things. It is extremely out of character for me to even use the word schedule. 😉 But listing out what I should be doing on each day has helped me find balance. Balance between being a wife/mommy and a dreamer who’s reaching for a goal. For example…today’s Tuesday. My goals are to work on my post for the G-SD team, spend some time reading and commenting on friends’ blog posts and goals, spend lots of time with Mae, catch up on cleaning/laundry, make dinner, and work out tonight. No book allowed on Tuesdays, and it’s good. (Maybe I’ll share my schedule with you in another post. :))

3. Connect with my prayer buddy on a regular basis. This one isn’t too hard since we text almost daily, and I have chances to talk with her throughout the week. While I don’t want to overwhelm her (she has a life, too!) prayer is an important part of this journey, one that I sometimes put on the back burner. The truth is, it’s an amazing blessing to have a friend (and even, friends) who will pray me through this journey.

4. Surrender daily. Along with prayer, I’ve realized that each word I write needs to be surrendered to my Father…I want to give Him all of my book and all of my dream. This isn’t about me keeping a tight clench on the pieces of it I think I can handle on my own. It’s about letting go and trusting that He’ll bring something beautiful in His time.

Progress is slow on some of these, but I feel like I’m finding balance…something that has often been lacking in my daily life.

And since I should probably save something for next week, I’ll stop there.

Definitely smiling today…God is so Good, isn’t He?

And if you’d like to read more about what God is doing in the lives of other dreamers, hop on over here and check out the linkup! Truly, there are some incredibly beautiful stories here that God is writing.