Goals

When I was home over Christmas, I came across a notepad someone had given me some ten or twelve years ago. In it, I had written all kinds of stuff...books I planned to write, an open letter to the President (that stayed in my closed notebook), a schedule (that had me getting up at 4:30 am to practice guitar), and all kinds of other odds and ends.

Just for fun, I started to peruse some of my other old journals and such as well. The first journal I have I must have started when I was about seven. In it, I had a list of people that I liked, people that I didn't like, and people who were sort of "in the middle." My parents were on the list of people that I did like, which probably means I had made it through that day without getting spanked. I seem to remember telling Allyson about that time that if she wasn't nice to me I would put her on the list of people I didn't like. As I recall, she took that as a very serious threat.

Anyway, one of the things I browsed through was the list of goals I made for 2005. I found that I had accomplished about half of them. That's rather pathetic, except that I've learned after putting goals on paper like that a few times that I usually accomplish about half of them regardless of how many or how few I set. I figure I might as well set a bunch and hope for the best.

One thing that struck me as I went through pages of stuff that I've written was how much and yet so little of my life has gone according to my plans.

I hate jigsaw puzzles, but I'll use the analogy anyway...it's been neat to see how the Lord has so often taken what looked like a shapeless, meaningless piece of my life and used it to snap together other shapeless, meaningless pieces of my life to do what I never would have thought possible. I still don't have the "box top" and I don't know what it will look like when He's done, but I know that He that has begun the work will be faithful to complete it.

I used my flight back from NH on Tuesday to try to set some new goals. Although some of them are one-year goals, I decided to also make a "five-year plan." It's a delicate process because even with my 50/50 record, I hate setting goals that I don't reach. Sometimes it's hard to maintain the balance between working diligently toward your goals and being flexible.

At the very least, I can look back in five years and chuckle - like I do now at my plan to write a book on getting along with your brother. I no longer keep a running list of people that I like and dislike, but if I did, he'd be on the list of people I like very much. And Allyson would be right at the top. :)