An Intentional New Blog

From the time that my son Nathan was in my womb, I've kept a weekly blog, documenting these oh-so-precious moments that are so easily forgotten by a sleep deprived brain. At some point, I will need to respect the privacy of my children and close this chapter of my blogging "career" so I will be using this blog as an outlet to relieve my itch to process my thoughts, write them down, and share them with those who are interested.

I am a part of a Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group that meets twice a month. Today we had an amazing speaker, Susan Seay, come in to talk about Intentional Parenting. This talk really was a great wrap up to the latest self-discovery journey that I embarked on about 6 months ago. It all started with some "light reading" for a family cruise, but more on that later.

Seay defines intentional parenting as "a parenting approach for families who desire to live a life of purpose and meaning in spite of living in a busy, noisy, and chaotic world. They choose to live according to their God-given purpose and to resist the tempting distractions." You can view parenting as a spectrum, with intentional parenting on one side and "distracted" on the other.

Influenced by Pinterest pins, a whole slew of parenting books, and fear of judgement, I started out this gig 100% distracted, well, maybe 80%. In the next few posts, I'll share more about the moments where I transitioned from a distracted person to a more intentional individual.

Seay talked about three areas in our lives where we need to be intentional.

1. We should have a clear vision for our family. She had us add 10 years to our children's age and try to imagine what kind of person we would like to see, and then she extended that to the family.

2. We should focus our lives around a few core values. These core values will anchor us, and keep us from being too distracted from fulfilling God's purpose for us. Tentatively, ours are Love, Serve, Respect.

3. Be intentional in these areas of life: care taking; home management/maintenance; activities (outside the house); current issues or problems; and self care. While most of us are more gifted in one or more areas, I see the necessity of maintaining a healthy balance between all of them. Confession: I definitely need to work more on the home management/maintenance department.

Revelations 4:11 reminds us that "Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created." We were intentionally created and are intentionally loved. Let's try to be more intentional on our end, especially in all that we do.