Back to Reality

Okay so I had a “come back to reality Aubrey” moment this week when I realized there was no way I would be blogging daily about my progress in my discipline dare. I also figured no one really wants to read about that everyday anyway. I do want to say thank you to all of you for your comments and encouragement on my first post, it is always a little scary to be transparent especially when you have no idea who might be reading what you write but what I always find is I learn there are lots of others that can relate and I end up being very encouraged by it. I also want to clarify something, I hope I did not offend anyone when I said I felt like my blog had become an online scrapbook, please don’t take that to mean I think there is anything wrong with using your blog as an outlet to share photos and experiences with your friends and family because trust me I LOVE to look at all of your blogs and see photos of your darlings and read up on what your family has been doing. What I was trying to say is for me, this blog began as a place to put my personal thoughts and share the trial I was going through at the time and I just felt like I needed to get back to that place of honesty. This doesn’t mean I am going to stop putting photos and family updates on the blog it just means I’m hoping to also include more blogs about my personal thoughts, struggles, goals and dreams as I strive to become a better Christian, wife, mother, friend, worker and person.

Whew, now that we got all of that out of the way on to my progress & digression in my quest for more discipline. I’ve done pretty good getting to the gym this week although I did oversleep yesterday but I’m thinking my body was needing the rest. I cannot tell you how much easier having a workout partner has made getting up early and getting there, it makes a world of difference. If you are struggling to get to the gym or get out and exercise I highly recommend you find a partner or two. In fact anyone that would like to join me at Hendrick at 5:30am I’d love to help hold you accountable and vice versa. I’ve been consistent so far this week with logging everything I eat and all of my workouts on Sparkpeople. This is another tool I would highly recommend. It is a great tool where you can log your workouts and see about how many calories you are burning and log what you eat, their database has thousands of different food items in it, and you can see how many calories you intake in a day. You input some personal data and it calculates your BMR which is your Basal Metabolic Rate, which is the number of calories your body burns on a daily basis to perform its basic tasks like breathing and pumping blood. Then at the end of the day you can run different reports that show you total calories burned and totally calories consumed. I find it to be very eye opening to see how many calories are in different things I eat and how many calories I am consuming each day. If you really want to get precise another tool I recommend is a heart rate monitor which you wear while you workout and it tells you precisely how many calories you burned whereas Sparkpeople would just be giving an estimate since in the same workout two people burn a different amount of calories. I have one that I used to use all the time but the battery is now dead and I just haven’t taken the time to go buy one. While I’ve been pretty good at working out and logging my workouts and meals I haven’t made the greatest choices in eating. I have avoided cokes, candy and chocolate donuts but I did indulge in some cookies last night and of course I couldn’t stop at one, I had to eat four! I’ve done pretty good with breakfast and lunch, it is dinner and evening snacks that seem to get me. Justin’s dad is staying with us right now and he loves to eat out and instead of opting for a light salad or soup when we go out to eat I usually indulge in whatever my favorite dish is at that particular restaurant. I did manage to avoid the cinnamon pull apart bread this morning that Bill brings to work every Friday and opted instead for my favorite yogurt parfait- you’ve really got to try it- Greek yogurt, strawberries, blueberries, granola and almonds.

I’ve been trying to spend some time working on my bible study every night this week and have really enjoyed that. Last night the study was about being willing to surrender to ourselves to Christ. This is something I really struggle with, there are certain areas I find are more difficult than others to surrender to Him but He doesn’t call me to pick and choose what I want to surrender to Him, He calls me to surrender everything to Him…my marriage, my daughter, my health, my family’s health, my job, my money, my house, everything! Some of those things are really kind of scary for me to surrender but why? I think often the reason why is because I feel like if I say for example God I surrender my family’s health to you that it means He is going to test that by making one of my family members very ill. What I have to remember is being surrendered to Him is not the scary place to be, its not being surrendered to Him that is scary. I have to go back to Jer 29:11 and remember His plans for my life are for my good not my harm. The writer of the study quoted someone who said all we have to do is “Be willing to be made willing.” I thought last night I can do that so that is my prayer right now, that God will make me willing to be willing to do whatever He asks of me. I did a study on prayer a few years ago with my mom and grandmother and I learned a lot in it. I would often feel bad because I didn’t sit down and spend hours in prayer everyday but what I learned through that study is prayer is an ongoing conversation with God. That has really changed the way I pray and look at prayer. I have found that becoming a mother has strengthened my prayer life especially in those first months, I felt like I was constantly in a state of prayer. All that being said I still have a lot of growing to do in my prayer life and I believe there are definitely times when we should be spending long periods of time in prayer and that is a struggle for me. I have a hard time sitting still and being quiet and focused. I also believe as a family we need to pray more, we have not been consistent in praying at meals, praying together when we put Ava to bed or praying together as a couple and those are all things I want to strive to be more consistent in.

There have been some nights this week that I have really struggled to be consistent with discipline. I find when I’m tired or I’ve had a long day it is really hard to make myself discipline her. Now I need to clarify, Ava is not an out of control hellion or anything, I hope my last post didn’t make it sound this way, she is just getting to that age where she wants to test our authority. She definitely has a strong will and is not afraid to push us. Her favorite way of doing this is standing on the furniture and looking us square in the eye while saying “No” with a big smile on her face. Because of that she has made multiple trips a night to time out. Last night my friend Kimberly came by the house with her little boy Griffin who will turn one next week. I think that might have been the first time I’ve gotten to watch Ava play with a child younger than her. I was a little nervous wondering if she was going to push or hit him to try and show her dominance but she didn’t, in fact she was really pretty sweet to him other than not liking it when I would hold him or kiss on him. It was good to see her be so loving to him since the idea of having another one sometime in the next year or two has been creeping up in my head a lot lately.

So far this week I’ve managed to not spend a dime however I have to say my new Stella and Dot fall catalogs came in this week and I have definitely been lusting after it. The fact that I can get samples at 50% off until August 5th is making the temptation even stronger. I decided this time around though instead of just buying a bunch of samples out of our money I would try to sell some of my old samples and have a party to sell some new pieces to make money to buy my samples. I had a party last night and didn’t really sell that much and I am feeling this temptation to go ahead and buy a lot more in samples than what I made in sales from the party. I was already trying to justify it last night by telling myself and Justin that I can’t sell the new fall line if I don’t have a lot of the pieces for people to try on and see in person. While that may be somewhat true I know my real reasoning is I just want the pretty new jewelry. Part of me really didn’t want to write this because I knew as soon as I did I would have lots of people holding me accountable but I knew I had to because I need that accountability. So I’m just going to have to choose wisely what samples to buy with the money I did make.