One of the goals I have is to be more intentional. More intentional with spending time with my family, and friends, and taking care of myself, and my home. Hopefully, you can find encouragement in these areas along with me.

Being intentional is to have purpose, resolve, and not be in a hurry.

Intentional about being present with family and friends

• You can spend time with others, but not really be present. When I am spending time at home with family, I don’t want to be distracted with work or spend time on my phone when we are hanging out talking or playing a game.
• It is vital to cultivate your relationship with your spouse. Make it a priority to spend time together and go on dates. It doesn’t have to be expensive. One of my favorite memories is the dates my husband and I would go on when the kids were young to get a smoothie and see if we could find a treasure at Goodwill.
• It is easy to stay in your own world and look up one day and realize you don’t have friends. I poured most of my time into our kid’s homeschooling, and the job my husband had at the time would bring him home late. One day I realized that I didn’t really have a life outside of my family. It is good to get out and spend time with friends. It can be scary to take the initiative, but many other women feel the same way. Call or text someone you’d like to get to know better and ask them to meet for coffee.

Intentional about how you spend your time

• Can you relate to getting distracted easily? I scroll on my phone for too long. I find odd jobs that I don’t really need to be doing at the moment. I let time get away from me. Then I wonder why I didn’t spend time doing something of value.
• Spend your time doing something you like. Hobbies are great. If you don’t have one, try different ideas until you come across something you like to do.
• Tell your time where to go. Write down what you would like to get done. Don’t make it too long or you will be discouraged when you aren’t able to accomplish everything on your list, I am speaking from experience.

Intentional about self-care

• I can get out of balance and spend too much time working and not take the time to do self-care. It isn’t selfish to take care of yourself. It is easy to get in the mindset of thinking, I can’t rest unless I am sick. That isn’t healthy.
• It is okay to rest. It is okay to have me time. You aren’t being selfish. Spend time reading a book. Take a bath. Listen to music.
• Part of self-care for me is using products with the best possible ingredients. Staying healthy is important, but give yourself grace too.

Intentional about living simply

• For me living simply is living without an abundance of “stuff” to distract me. By stuff I mean excess. It is reducing clutter in my life. Removing clutter and distractions helps me with stress and focus.
• Living simply can also include all the emails that pile up or photos that need to be deleted.
• I have lived in smaller homes and it has caused us to be careful about what we bring into our homes. The only difference is now I am trying to be more intentional about what I am keeping and what I am letting go of. I have to ask myself questions like: do I need or use this, is it blessing me or stressing me, how would I feel if I let go of it?

One last thing, I can’t live with purpose without having God be at the center of my life. I can try to do all these things on my own, but I couldn’t sustain it for very long. My faith is important to me and I don’t want to even try to live intentionally without giving every area of my life to Jesus.