Now Is My Time #13: New Prayer Wishes

I've been looking at my old Prayer Wish Jar that has been so special to me over the past few years. You can read all about the history of the Prayer Wish Jar here. I also have a Little Jar With Big Wishes and a 2014 Jar of Wishes too.

The Prayer Wish Jar was a place to write a nightly visualization prayer where I "saw" a challenging and stressful situation resolve and leave our lives. Now that the situation I was visualizing has really come to fruition for the most part and that situation is much less stressful for us, I felt like I was ready to say goodbye to those prayers with gratitude and appreciation that they were answered over time and that those things we prayed for have happened mostly.

So I took a moment to recognize the blessings and then dumped all the pretty prayers written on such colorful, cheerful paper into my trash can. I instagrammed it and you can see it here. Then I gave the old fishbowl a good washing. Ahhh, all clean and ready for new prayer wishes. I think it's time to start Prayer Wishing some great things for our family. I'm thinking about more adventures and some new things we need. Our old prayers were to remove sorrowful situations, my new prayers I want to be all about joyful things to come. Out with the old, in with the new.

I decided to let the bowl sit empty for a while. I liked the look of anticipation it kept giving me as I thought about what would go into that bowl now and what a happy place it would be full of happy wishes written on beautiful strips of paper.

Last week after a frustrating conversation I knew it was time to add a new and powerful wish to the jar. I know how I want this situation to resolve itself and I've put it out there. I even meditated the conversation I want to have when the situation is resolved. So I'm putting it out there with full force and very positive energy.

I cut a bunch of paper strips in lovely spring colors so they are all ready for me. I'm looking forward to starting new thoughts for new things to come. We're ready to say goodbye to a lot from the past few years and ready to open up new adventures. It will be fun to see this jar fill up with happy new wishes for days to come.

Living In The Middle Of Big Goals

When you begin a long term goal, I think there is always this secret hope that somehow, miraculously, this goal you anticipate will take you a good year or so will magically fall into place on it's own in three or four weeks max.

One thing I have learned this year about myself is that I like to chose or be given a goal or assignment and then find the most expeditious way to complete it. I like to get the "satisfaction of completion" phase happening as quickly as possible. This would explain why I don't enjoy very much long-term projects that can't be quickly accomplished in a few hours time. While I might enjoy doing those things, I just am not drawn to them because of the time they take and the amount of attention to detail they require over a long period of time. This tends to frustrate me a bit or create a massive disinterest at some point.

I have entered into quite a few long-term goals this year. In fact my biggest goals are things that will stretch throughout the year and I don't have any guarantees that they will be able to be completed by the end of the year. So here I am at the end of the first quarter of 2014, having to learn new patience for living in the middle of my big goals.

Have I seen some improvement, progress? Yes absolutely. But I also see all that still needs to be done. I have seen my progress slip and even backslide during certain weeks. That can be incredibly discouraging when you are trying for something that you already know is going to take a long time. There have been moments where I just wanted to throw in the towel when it seemed temporarily that nothing was getting better. Thankfully as I've pushed forward I've seen new improvements, found new approaches that help me continue my progress and most importantly I've developed some staying power, through habit building, to stick with my efforts.

Perhaps that patience and staying power is the most important thing I have to gain, more important than my progress towards the completion of my specific goals. Learning to do things that challenge me in new directions forces me to use and build new muscle where I didn't have it before. Just like that is important when working out the physical body it is important in our soul development too -- and at times both are annoying and irritating.

So here I am in the middle of crossing the wide sea towards my goals. I can't see either coast yet, but I know if I keep rowing I'll get to where I want to go eventually. Staying out here in the middle certainly isn't satisfactory, so more, consistent paddling needs to be done. I will paddle my best today and again tomorrow and the next day and see if I can pull that distant shore in a little closer to my view. Life lessons to learn.