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WHAT SHOULD YOUR LIFE BE ABOUT AT THE BEGINNING OF 2019?

I used to try to cram all of my goals into the beginning of the year. And I would scramble for a few weeks potentially months—at best and then drop all of them by April.

I’ve learned something very valuable that I wanted to share today. I want to talk to you about exactly how I set my priorities throughout every year. It frees me up to focus, relax and listen to God’s voice.

This year I’m really excited and there’s a lot of really good things! And I want that for you as well. If you want to move your marriage to a place of peace and passion and joy and purpose, I would love to jump on a FREE breakthrough call where you can discover solutions immediately.

Sign up here: https://dym.as.me/ God bless you in 2019!

(If you’re not in my FREE private Facebook group where we discuss intimacy and marriage and purpose in life and I walk with God join here!… Wives only! 🙂 ) www.facebook.com/groups/delightym/

 

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Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. This show where you hear from amazing and inspiring wives sharing their struggles, triumphs and advice for this journey called marriage. Here’s your host belah. Rose.

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Oh, all right. Well, welcome. Thank you so much for joining. This is belah rose. And it is just about the end of the year 2017. So if you have been tracking with us the entire year, I am so excited that we’re wrapping up now. And it’s a very special time. I think of life these couple of weeks, right around Christmas, right before the New Year. I love it. I love the energy in the air. I love that people are really focused on thinking about family, and thinking about what matters. A lot of people are also thinking about goals and, and next year, and it just seems like there’s so much hope about what they can change in their lives. And I think it’s great. I really do. I think that God has a God of new beginnings, he gives us the opportunity to change, to be new, to have forgiveness. And so I think he loves that we have this inspiration, all of a sudden to be different, to be more aligned with the people we want to become. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today is my journey with that in recent weeks. You know, I ultimately, desire from this podcast to inspire you, to motivate you to encourage you in your marriage. And the reason I choose marriage as the subject for inspiring and motivating you is because it’s the deepest, most wonderful relationship in human pneus. In terms of human relationships, it’s the biggest, it can also be the darkest, the most depressing, most despairing, most strife filled experience in your life. And it affects everything. So that’s why I really focus in on marriage. And when I say it affects everything, it affects the way you parent, it affects the way you are able to work in a job, it affects your ministry, it affects your ability to love other people. Well, you know, if your love deprived in your own marriage, you’re not going to be able to have the emotional capacity to carry other people’s burdens, because you’re so burden in your own heart and you don’t have that freedom to live well. So I want to talk about my own journey. Like I said with that. I want to give more specifics than I often do about my heart and what I’m going through right now. And I think that is actually important. Because certainly, you could view it as well. Bella’s bragging to us or something along those lines. Or you could maybe view it as this is her story. And maybe there are elements of that that I could pick out and it would be applicable to mine as well. And I’m hoping that your response is the latter. Because at any time you’re welcome to stop this episode and not listen to the rest. So if it’s not jiving with you, this episode is not for you. It’s it’s probably for someone else who is listening and decides to listen through to the end. So I am a mom, I have a four and a half year old and almost three year old. And they’re wonderful little boys, very energetic. My husband is a stay at home dad, which I love. And I work full time. And it’s really a cool lifestyle. God has given us a lot of good things, to be able to have that lifestyle. One of the really great things God has given us is the grace to make.

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Make do with less less than a lot of people would be willing to make do with and one of the things that we have chosen is to live in a small space and have few possessions. So one way that we afford to live in New York City is by having a roommate. So we live in a one bedroom apartment and our roommate lives in the one bedroom. And so we have the living room space as our bedroom and we built a room room that juts into that living room space. And that room, like I said, we built, and that actually is the boys room. So my husband was so cool because he also built the bunk bed that they live in. So we’ve just been really creative with the means and the ways that God has given us, my husband did a lot of research online to figure out how to build that bunk bed. So instead of it costing hundreds of dollars, I think it costs less than 50, which was really cool. And that’s kind of the way we functioned in all of our lives is that, you know, if, if we can’t afford it, we just figure it out, we just find a way or we or we just do without, that’s that’s a big piece of it. We don’t go on vacations or big dates, extravagant things we don’t often go out to eat, there’s lots of things we just do without because my bigger value is to spend time with my family than it is to make so much money that I don’t have time with them. But I have so many responsibilities at work, I have to be constantly on my phone to check email throughout the day, and I’m never present with them. So those are some some ways that we’ve kind of oriented our life, to work within the values that we desire. I think the other reason I wanted to share some of the details around my life is to help someone else may be see that there’s another way to live. I think sometimes, unless we see someone breaking the mold, sometimes we don’t even realize there is a mold. We think that this is the only way to do or to be. And suddenly someone goes off the path. And we’re like, Oh, there’s another way to do this. I don’t have to do it. Like my parents did it, I don’t have to do it. Like, the people around me did it or my my friends are doing it or the culture around me is doing it. The other thing that we do is we stay in the place that we live, because of the community we feel God wants us to be a part of, you know, my husband and I were trying to even just kind of as a thing to think about is how much would we need to be offered in terms of money for us to move out of the community we live in? We were just trying to put a price tag on it. Would it be $100,000? Would it be $200,000? Would it be $500,000 for us to move away from this community? This place right here? And honestly, no. I really believe this is where God wants us. This community. He is growing us. He’s blessing us, the people in our church have sewn into our kids and sewn into our lives. And we’re connected here, we’re growing here, I think this is where God wants us to be the people we’re loving, we’re in for the long term. You know, Christianity is not a shot, like, you know, you can jump in there, tell them you know, give them a track and jump out and they’re gonna believe in Jesus for the rest of their lives, they’re going to be sold out because they read one track. You know, God sometimes works like that. But you know what, Jesus built relationships with people. He was in the messy he was in the dark, the hard the, you know, gross places, he walked in dirt and mud, you know, he built close friendships, new intimate friendships with these disciples.

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Even, you know, the church and x. And it may be you think, well, Jesus’s ministry was only three years, certainly, but I guess, probably more. So we’re not Jesus that I’d say more. So if you think Look at Acts like these were people that shared lives together. They weren’t like joining in a life with with a group of people. And then like, suddenly, like jerking out of the that community because they, you know, had to go for another job. I mean, certainly they sent off missionaries and those kinds of things, but they stayed in that community. And I think that’s a cultural thing that isn’t necessarily a biblical one. You know, sometimes God calls us to different places, and it’s mission work and that kind of thing. But just the assumption that a job offer means God is calling you to move your family across the country or across the world. I think that might I think it’s a knee jerk reaction which would require a lot of contemplation and processing prayer. That is this God’s will is it, you know, $100,000 Raise really God’s will for every part of our life. So, those are choices, like I said, that we have made that align with our values and kind of have made us where we are right now. And kind of help us help to guide us to I believe, be more attuned to God’s heart, be able to be more attuned, the thing about having simple possessions or not even many possessions, is that it helps us to not crowd our space, our living space, or our minds with things, you know, even desire of things. My wardrobe is very simple, it it essentially is two drawers of clothes. And, well, maybe four, four drawers of clothes. The dresses, I only wear in the summertime, so that’s what I’m thinking about. But I, you know, each each item of clothing I enjoy, and I like to wear. But I couldn’t tell you the last time I went shopping for clothes, that’s not something I value, I think about the poor, the poor children and women and the people in different countries that are literally in sweatshops making those clothing so that we can wear it a few times and throw it out. And that burdens my heart. And I think it’s a luxury in the United States that we never have to see that. But it’s true. That’s where our clothes are coming from. They’re not coming from, you know, the store, they’re coming from another place in another part of the world. And they’re coming from the hands of young people that are not being paid well. So, so that’s just another side. But I tried to be really intentional about what what do we need, as people I mean, by God’s grace, we have bought our kids, probably two sets of clothes, two pairs of shoes at the most, I think as in to two boys, right? So one pair of shoes, the other pair of shoes, and it allows us to receive good things from our friends. You know, it’s the grace of receiving, I think that that’s something we don’t do as a culture is receive that we act like we’re too good to receive. And, and yet that’s it’s a humility thing, you have to be vulnerable to receive, you have to say that, that that means something to you to receive a gift to receive someone else’s clothing. You know, that’s something that really is something I had to work through crickets growing up, it was like, oh, no, no, no, I have plenty, don’t worry, I’ll go buy it. But meanwhile, we’re stretching our pennies to even pay for field trips. And yet we’re pretending that we’ve got plenty to buy new clothes every year. And, and those are not things that we need to buy into. It’s the opposite. So those are just kind of life life, values and things. But here’s what I’ve been really, really challenged on recently that I just didn’t realize, and it was a huge wake up call. And I’m so so grateful to God that He gave me the grace to see this because I was blind. I was completely blind to it. And it might have been God’s grace, it probably was that he allowed me to be blind to it for so long.

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Because I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, maybe I just wouldn’t. So what happened was I got pregnant earlier than I expected. I wasn’t ready, quote, unquote. I felt like I had so many goals to accomplish, and then suddenly I’m pregnant. And, you know, I was pretty quick to think that I had embraced, being pregnant and becoming a mom. And there were certain really cool things. I thought about becoming a mom, I really did. And there were certain things that I fully embraced. I really enjoyed aspects of it. And I could list experiences that were just so meaningful and really beautiful and I loved. But I will say that I still had my my goals. I was a motivated woman. I was a mom, but I also was going to do X, Y and Z alongside it and I and I didn’t. I didn’t take stock of what it means to be a mother. Now in my life So there’s a really cool guy named Pete ska Xero. And I’ve been listened to his stuff recently. He’s just fantastic PE te, Pete SCAZZ Er, oh, oh my gosh, I am learning so much. He’s got a fantastic podcast, just search his name. And he says that success in life is doing God’s will, God’s way, in God’s timing. And I think that God has given me a ton of goals. I’m so goal oriented. It’s crazy. And I think that’s okay. That’s a lot of my personality and the way I get motivated about life, it’s, it’s brilliant. I like it. And by God’s grace, I mean, dy M has come because of that, and my book and my video course, and coaching all these things, because I’m goal oriented. But I do think that, you know, through prayer, through reflection, through doing a lot of hard work, I do think I’ve been working to discern God’s will, in my life. And in even in in, you know, certainly, this constant process. So I’m not saying I’m there. But in terms of previous seasons, I feel like God is leading me, I feel like I’m becoming more close, or closer to his way. But I think, in a lot of these goals, I had the timing mixed up. I really had the timing mixed up. So here’s what happened. My son, who’s four and a half recently started pre K. And I went to our first parent teacher conference. And she said wonderful things about my son really, really encouraging things, a lot of things that I knew, I was like, Oh, he’s, you know, he’s really lovely in these areas. And he works hard. And he’s curious, and he’s adventuresome. And, you know, those are all cool things. But then she told me some things that were not so good, and some things that needed work, and almost like, suddenly hit me that I was not paying attention to my voice. And it’s kind of funny, because the thing she actually said, wouldn’t have told you that, like, if maybe you had heard her words, you might have thought, oh, this, you know, this means this. But to me, it was, I mean, in looking back at it, it had to have been the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Because suddenly, again, my eyes were open to this big gaping, you know, blaring light of, of, I’m not paying attention to my kids, that my kids are on the back burner, and my goals are on the front burner. And they have been maybe, since the kids were born. And I could go for I could tell you all the things that I’ve done since my kids were born. And there’s a lot and I’ve been proud of them. I’ve been proud of this accomplishments. And this is the first time I’m looking at my child’s life and my life during his life. And realizing, gosh, did I miss it? Were my priorities so far, from where they should have been during that time? That i

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i, such foolishness, it feels such foolishness that my attention was on building businesses and, and doing this and doing that and they weren’t on what mattered most during that timing. And so this was super helpful for me, I feel like that, that notion of needing to focus on my kids right now. I was like, Okay, now what can I do practically to put this in a framework or structure, I understand something that’ll get make this kind of theoretical idea, and kind of zero it into. I can look at this. This is a visual I can understand and kind of work with. So here’s what I did. I drew a line on a paper and I put zero on one end, and 100 on another end. And, you know, we’ve all heard the phrase, life is short, and you might not live another day, so give it your all Today, I think that’s great. I think it’s good, but it doesn’t give the long view of life. Because life is actually long. It’s 100 years, could be longer. Certainly, it could be shorter, but plan for the long haul. So that’s what it was zero to 100, high, cut the middle in 50. And then just cut each in half, right? So we got 50. And then I cut it smaller to 25. I cut it smaller to 12 and a half. And I did the same on the other side, I’ve got 50, then 75, cut 75 and a half. And I actually don’t have I didn’t calculate that, because I’m not there yet. So anyway, um, I’m under 50. So after kind of cutting it in half, and I put a star in the spot that I am sorry, guys, I’m not revealing my age right now. So I put the star in where I am. And then I calculated how much like what kind of the big milestones of life in each chunk. And so zero to 12. That was my childhood, right? That was starting to walk talk, elementary school, middle school, going through puberty, all that the next 12 years was a ton, right? That was high school, college, a ton of other things. Growth, like just insane change in that little 12 year chunk. And then the following 12 years is like other big changes and milestones and these things. And I would just encourage you to go through and figure out, you know, what’s happened in your life, these different chunks of years. What of what, what went down, right? And then I, I calculated how long it’s going to be until my kids leave the house. And for me, it’ll be 14 to 15 years. And you know, whether they decide to go to college, or whether they decide to do anything with their lives, they’re gonna leave the house at that point probably in or we might just kick them out. Who knows. So what I realized is that in this giant line, which I would estimate, let’s say eight inches across the amount of those 1415 years is like, a half inch. So we’ve got eight inches of life and a half inch is the little bit of time I get to be a mother that matters so much. See, these kids, these two little humans, their souls are in the balance. Right? They are my responsibility. They’re the only people in the world that I can influence. I mean, I can influence them the most, I’m their mother. There’s never going to be someone like me in their lives. And it was so revelatory for me to realize, like, I have time for that other stuff, all those goals, all those ambitions, all the ways that I want to be in the world and show up and give to people in serving. They’re not bad goals. Really. They’re good goals. They’re They’re wonderful goals. I want to do more coaching, I want to write more books, I want to write more courses I, you know, they’re good, good goals. And,

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and yet, this is my small chunk. And this is what I believe, is God’s will, God’s way in God’s timing. This is God’s timing for this 15 years. And even smaller than that, if I really think about it, it’s like, we’re like eight years before they turn 12. Where it’s really their childhood. That’s really where they get formed. That’s when they understand this is what matters. These are values that I hold. These are my my character traits, this is what matters most in life. This is the kind of person I am that that gets shaped before they’re 12. I mean, think about your childhood, right? You pretty much had yourself established by that point. The rest was like kind of growing into that. But those early years are, are when you can be hurt the most as a person. And think about it that way that those little eight years is then going to be their lifetime worth of different things they have to deal with that happened in their childhood, whether it’s therapy that they’re going to go to or, you know, bad things they’re going to do in the world or wonderful things life giving things souls that they’re going to impact for the Lord. Because of those small eight years that you invested. You were fully focused on and And, you know, obviously I’m saying all these things to myself, because this is all things I learned over the last couple of weeks. So it’s all fresh salt fresh in my mind this little, half inch, quarter inch, if you make it down to eight years, quarter inch of life, a very small percentage of your life, to be fully present, to be fully engaged. And when I say present, it is so fragile, precious, scary, scarce, that’s the word scarce. It’s so scarce. Attention, presence, having your mind in the spot it’s in right now. It’s so scarce, right? Because we’ve got our phones, we can flip through a text message, and I am, you know, an email, Facebook, Instagram, all those things to take our attention, suddenly, are our phones bringing about this thing or that thing? And I’ve got the music on the TV’s on there. I mean, our attention is everywhere. Is there moments, I mean, are there chunks of time where you are focused, where you really have focus. Because think about it, these eight years are the opportunity, you have to focus on a person who’s going to spend 100 years on this earth, what’s gonna matter to them for their 100 years. It’s your eight years, this is your investment. And it’s hard because when you know, in the stage of life, youth is valued in our culture, more than anything else. So it’s like, get your stuff done while you’re young. But the truth is, when you’re 60, when you’re 70, those are wildly productive, wonderful years, where you don’t have a lot of responsibility, you probably have gotten to a place of wealth, you’ve probably gotten to a place of you know, familial of, you know, peace because you’ve finally stopped realize that you don’t want to fight with everybody, you’ve probably grown spiritually, you probably ready to contribute to the world at the timing that God’s ready for you to do that, that, that you’ve matured. people skip Xero also says, on a podcast I listened to recently, he said that his mentor said his most productive years, were in his 60s and 70s. And it’s like, yeah, you know, when I was 24, I was the program manager of nonprofit, of a program in a nonprofit. And I have got to tell you, it was a very short time period that I worked there, just nine months. And the reason is, is because I was 24. And the oldest people that I was serving was 24, as well. And certainly I was mature, and I had a lot of confidence. But the truth is, my heart was in the right place. I wanted to serve them, I wanted to support them, but I hurt more than I helped. And I know that I know, I hurt them. And sometimes we’re like, oh, work doesn’t hurt or whatever. But no, this was people’s lives. And I didn’t have the experience, I didn’t have the wisdom I didn’t have what I needed to have to be able to serve them to love them well. And so for me to be so cocky to think that the goals and the desires God has put in me is for now.

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I think is is short sighted. So I’ve learned from that, I hope I’ve learned little parts from that at least. And my goal is that when I do get to these other stages of life, when I do get to the stage where my kids are out of the house, and I have so much more time and energy in a new, you know, new wisdom to contribute, that I’ll be at a place where God can really utilize all those visions and passions and, you know, the things that I’ve been really cultivating in my heart and just holding in my heart, just holding space for like, Oh, God, that’s cool. Maybe that’s something you know, we’ll see. Just kind of, you know, preparing yourself for that. And in terms of just staying open to it, maybe reading as you go or different things but not having that as your focus that what is priority in your life. In this season in this little quarter inch of life. What’s important, most important to you and again, I gave you kind of where I am, but where are you? Where’s your quarter inch? Is that your focus right now? And the other thing that was super helpful is after I did that 100 year line, and then kind of focused in on what milestones and Things were previous to where I am now. I also went through and I journaled, I started out with 100 year goals, and I journaled goals that I want to add place the life I want to be at 100 years. You know, I’ll I’ll just, I’ll read them to you. I’ll go ahead and read, I’ll read them to you. And maybe that’ll inspire or encourage or, you know, have nothing to do with you. But again, feel free to flip to another podcast. Okay, so 100 year goals, fulfilling, joyful, effective, passionate per life, mentor of mentors, close friends with grandkids and kids. 100 year goals. So those are those. When I’m 70 I want to be author of 12 books and courses, thriving coaches, choke, coaching, practice, travel with husband around the world, spend considerable time with grandkids fit, close friendships, in love with Jesus in character, and then heart. When I’m 50, I want to be building businesses getting to 30 different streams of income remaining with small budget, but great giving percentage 90% giving 10% utilizing for our personal budget. I want to support responsible and rich. Yeah, responsible and mature nonprofits. I want to mentor to young women want to be humble, I want to be student of the word, I want to have a daily prayer life of an hour a day, I want to have a flexible work schedule work passions, as a thriving business owner, and I can handle philosophy in Spanish, which is clear I want to have learned Spanish by then. So then I just kind of went through from there and then I’ve got you know, I want to have children complete high school that I’ve been the mom who paid attention, trusted God and modeled godliness, awesome marriage rejuvenating walk with God, boys or men of character pursuing God’s will in his way and in His timing want to be present with my boys understand developing child’s brain parent with patience and wisdom leavings it is in prayer with God consistent time spent. So boys work hard, physically. Boys proficient in different language, boys confident in strengths boys having varied and interesting experiences, value health of family, lots of family traditions, excellent at work. Okay, so other things that kind of are a little more specific to me. Yeah, and then I went all the way to more close goals, right. So more like five year and then one year goals. And so that was kind of what I went through this process of understanding my bigger goals in life, and all those goals kind of building on each other. Right? By the time I’m 50, those will be still in place. By the time I’m 70. That kind of a thing. And for me, that was really helpful to look at the long view and to kind of put myself in the longer view of life and to realize, you know, what is it that I want? Long term, to give me context into this season? And you know that if you haven’t yet listened to my podcast episode about saying no. The discipline of saying no, I encourage you to go back and listen to that. And that’s how I determine I kind of pray through and understand

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or seek to understand God’s will in specific seasons of my life. And so yeah, I encourage you to go back and listen to that, that that’s episode 144. So feel free to go back and listen to that if you’d like. Insight into into my process there. Okay, so now we’re at kind of what’s next. So I’m still praying through I’m still working to understand I still have work to do in terms of journaling and prayer about I want to pray through and white write out the kind of mom that I want to be remembered as, and that’s a way to phrase it that might be helpful for you. When you’re thinking, you know, how do I put this practically into words, answer the question. Who do I want to be remembered as in this area of my life? There’s a great author, Stephen Covey, who wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And he talks about Imagine your funeral. And if one person from every area of your life were to get up and give a eulogy, what would you want them to say? And write that out? Write it out. What do you want people in areas of your life to say about you and obviously you’re not living for people. That’s not the point here. The point is for you to get the long view in every area of your life, in your marriage, in your walk with God, you know, in your church, in your family, at your work, in your ministry, whatever areas of your life, but do the hard work of writing that out, you’ve got just a few weeks before, I guess two weeks before the New Year, why not give yourself a deadline of doing this, you know, I would encourage you, if I were to give you homework, it would be this it would be to make that line. Think about the milestones you’ve had on each section, each 12 year section, write those out and then put a star where you are right now. And then after that, like kind of recognize how small that star is, is small, that little chunk of time is maybe whatever of the next kind of key milestone in your life, whether it’s retirement or you know, having a child or you know, whatever, whatever it is, and then and then give yourself the 100 year goals, what are there they and then kind of break it out by maybe 20 years or 15 years or whatever, however you want to break it out, and get all the way down to what are your smallest goals and just give yourself context and perspective. Um, what else did I want to say? I want to say that the enemy is trying to distract you. I think if the enemy can distract his people, and I say his people, I don’t mean his people, I would say people in general, if he can distract them away from what matters in life, then he Well, and the distractions come with come by many different ways, right? So that’s social media, its videos, its movies. So I’m going to call them out, right? That’s Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, YouTube. Then it’s also food. We’re going to talk about that next year. For me, that’s been a huge one to overcome. But it’s all these addictions, right? Alcohol, there’s just a ton, but addictions you don’t think are addictions, but they are. But the enemy doesn’t want you to know that. The point is, he’s gonna try to distract you from anything that actually matters. In this life, especially the way you will spend this life in order to impact the way you and anyone else spends eternity. He doesn’t want you to think about that. The other thing I want to say is that I think I have fallen into this trap. So I’m wondering if you have to, is that when God reveals something to you, you feel so terrible. You feel awful, because you’re like, oh, my gosh, I have just done everything wrong. For years, years I have messed up. And that is totally, totally normal. I have felt like that I feel like that. I mean, I just shared with you the ways I feel like that. But the truth is, it’s God’s kindness to lead us to repentance. It is kindness, that you don’t have to go one more day without being blind. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. It’s, it kind of reminds me of, you know, maybe someone was blind to their whole life. And, you know, the world felt safe, because they didn’t have to see anything. And, you know, they were kind of guided by their cane, and then all of a sudden, their eyes were opened, and they’re scary things all over the place. They could have fallen off of ledges and gotten drowned and seas and all these things that could have happened in life. And they didn’t know their whole lives. But God is, you know, he has blinded you on purpose. For reasons. Maybe you couldn’t handle it at the time. And maybe now you can.

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That metaphor just came to me. So please don’t think that I think there’s I don’t know, try to just take that with a grain of salt. If you think that’s a terrible metaphor, it’s fine. So what else did I want to say? Yeah, the other thing about it is we can either look at these opportunities to change as growth opportunities, challenges, you know, like, oh my gosh, I’m getting better. I’m growing this Also when I’m getting better at life, or we can look at it as I’m not good enough, I made another mistake. What is you know, I’m a terrible Christian, I obviously don’t follow Jesus enough. And I think it’s hard because as Christians, we want to be right. We want to be bearers of truth, we want to be able to help the world and everything. And sometimes that makes us really insecure about not knowing everything, and really insecure about change, because we think I should have already known this or because I didn’t, it means something about me, or I haven’t got that all thought through. So I can’t give you total, you know, totally my thoughts on it. But I will say that, as a Christian, you are on a journey. As a Christian, you are on a journey. It doesn’t mean that you have arrived, because you set Jesus Lord of your life, he is walking with you on this journey. You were not saved. And then he’s like, Okay, now be perfect. I’m gonna watch you and judge you from here. That’s not what he did or said, He died for you on the cross, so that you could wiped clean of your sin. And every day, you’ve got more to be wiped clean off. And every day, you know, by God’s grace, He gives you opportunities to see that he saved you from even more than you thought he did. And that’s an opportunity to run to him, with gratefulness with open arms with Thank You, Lord, I had no idea. And this is a reminder to me, because as you can tell, even on this podcast, there’s times that I’ve been like so down on myself and regretting and yet, thank you, Lord, that You gave me the opportunity. You know, thank you, Lord, that my kids are four and not 40. You know, thank you, Lord, that I only worked at that nonprofit for nine months, rather than 90 months, and, you know, hurt way more people. You know, thank you God for the opportunity, I have to make a change now. And regardless of your situation, that’s your story to thank God that you have an opportunity to change now, in 2017. Sorry, we’re at 2017. Yeah, well, I mean, process and make the change in 2017. So that 2018 is different. It’s different. Well, I am so excited. Next year, we’re going to be talking about some really cool stuff. One of them is I’m doing a series about body. So body image, just all sorts of stuff about body. The reason is, is because I think it’s the biggest what’s the word biggest impediment to intimacy with your husband? So I want to really focus on that. If you haven’t, like I said, listened to the podcast, about the discipline of saying no, I would really encourage that. So you can really pray through what your next season’s

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kind of themes are, again, that’s episode 144. And, you know, maybe your body image and body acceptance and freedom with your body, and food and all those those things that impact your sexuality. Maybe that’s your next season. And if it is, please tune in every week, because we’re going through a different aspect of that. And I’m going to ask you to do homework and I hope that you will really engage in that and work with me on that. And so you get to a place of freedom, because it is really cool. When you have gotten to a place of freedom in that area. If you’ve come from where I like I have been were bulimic and very overweight and very subconscious and getting to a place of freedom in that area, regardless of your size and shape. And, you know, plenty of roles I still have or you know, have had just, there’s a lot so really good stuff there. In the meantime, a reminder, you’ve got two more weeks before the New Year and spend some time asking God, what is this life to you? What are my 100 years supposed to be working on or whatever, however many years left, you have, now is the time. Thank god he’s giving you this opportunity to assess to reflect and possibly to make changes that roll you into the woman to the man if you’re listening. Who he wants you to be. Okay, well, we are taking a break until the new year so I will be talking to you January 2. Have a wonderful Christmas have a wonderful time. I hope that you draw near to family and friends. God bless you, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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Thanks for joining. If you’ve been inspired by this show, would you help spread the word? If you take a moment to review and subscribe others can find us more easily. Find out how to delight your marriage.com forward slash iTunes. Until next time, live with love, wisdom and passion