Redirect: Week Four Day One

The past month has been sort of lost in the shambles...As has the holiday weekend.

Dear Daughter ended up going into the hospital when she failed to improve in the week between appointments. But on the brighter side we now have answers we didn't have before. Mononucleosis is the creature that has been making her life a misery. She had mono back years ago while in middle school. The information we were given then was that once you had it you were immune. Apparently that is no longer true. I know several families in our church have nursery school aged children who have been treated several times this year alone for mono.

DD will be receiving shots of steroids over the next few weeks and she came home with a warning from our doc that if she doesn't take care of herself she'll spend weeks in the hospital the next go round. Since school starts in four short weeks, and her boyfriend is due home from service the week before school, she has lots of incentive to get well. I don't think it will take much more than a reminder to make her rest or eat properly. Besides, she found out the hospital doesn't have a great meal program and the variety of potato chips in the vending machine quickly palled.

I am breathing a sigh of relief on several accounts now. Number 1: We have answers and we know how to proceed from here. Number 2: There are no planned appointments for the month ahead. Number 3: I can now redirect my attentions to my purpose of living Inspired and catching up all around. (Fingers crossed, prayers said).

Seven weeks into my Living Inspired plan and I'd say I've lost a good month. So I'm going to do a do-over. I'm going to retrace my steps and start back at week four and work forward from there. I have a lot of areas I want to spread my focus out over and I will sit down and get my ideas organized. This whole business was to encompass a full Life experience: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, material and financial.

I've stumbled upon a couple of websites that I think will help direct my thoughts in a different direction. One is Angel Food Ministries. That will help trim our costs for groceries, and I plan to place my first order with them this week. I've never tried this resource of food before but hope it will help our budget. The other is a blog site that is about sustainable living and planning meals and such. Again this will affect my financial life.

About our financial life: Dear husband and I are well off in so far as not having debt. Not so much in so far as living goes however. It's pretty much pay check to pay check. We do allot money to tithes and savings, but we don't have clothing budgets or an entertianment budget nor retirement. These are areas I'd like very much to address.

July is a midway point. Typically around this time of year, I go back and look over our budget and adjust our items. Is our income more or less than at the beginning of the year? Do we have more or less bills? Have we had increases in areas? Decreases? Are there things I could do differently? Are there bills coming up in the months ahead that we should plan for? All these questions must be answered and looked into.

A second area to look over is my yearly resolutions. How have I done thus far in addressing my year long goals? How are my monthly goals stacking up in comparison to what I'd hoped to accomplish? What areas am I missing in entirety? What do I want to add now that I'm into the year and noticing deficits in areas? What just isn't working at all and needs to be rethought?

One area that is not going well is my attempt at novel writing. Nor making deadlines. This isn't something I could have helped in honesty. I've been at wit's end to fit in what I've done so far as writing goes, and that hasn't been much. This past week we had computer woes during the final deadline for a writing contest...I'm beginning to wonder if I'm even meant to be writing a novel at all. There's been more than the average amount of hindrances and interruptions to that plan. There is a real possibility that the blog entries, inspirational pieces and few articles that I get out are exactly what I should be concentrating upon at present. I don't mind resistance but this has gotten beyond absurb. Perhaps I'm not meant to be writing a novel at all, but something else entirely, a different book than the one I've planned...That bears thinking and praying over!

At any rate, here we are. On a do-over. Backing up and starting over again. Week Four.