That’s the sound I’m making now that our planning weekend is over.
This was really a different planning time than we’ve had in the past. We stayed home for the third year in a row. We’ve done this since we moved to 7+ acres in the country where we tend to feel like we’re on vacation. The problem has been to actually act like we are on vacation while we are at home.
We had a number of interruptions – but we also had an unprecedented six days set aside for planning. Since it seemed like a great deal of time compared to what we usually had we decided to have our piano lessons and home group meeting on Wednesday, then Thursday we went into town for our children’s Karate lessons when we went out to lunch and our financial planner met with us in the afternoon. Due to some recent health issues I had a test scheduled for Friday, which took half the day. (The biopsy was negative, for which we are all extremely grateful!) Then we invited out-of-town friends to come for dinner on Saturday, and Sunday our church’s missionaries from Ukraine were in town, so we went to church rather than worship at home as a family as we usually do during our planning weekend. Monday night was promotion night for Karate, so we ended our time together with them promoting to the next belt and then going out for a special dinner.
Needless to say, our seemingly endless supply of time just slipped through our fingers. We did have good times to talk, pray, and share, but we will be much more careful next year to clear our schedule better in preparation for these very important days. Since our planning time is always a learning time this too was an invaluable lesson.
Reasons for Ah…
In spite of the busyness we managed to discuss every area on our list.
Dan went back to work. After our craziness since November I felt we could finally settle back into a somewhat normal schedule.
Lists, lists, long, long lists! I always come away from our planning time with long lists of things I have to implement, or in some cases, I get to implement. This is a bitter-sweet time for me. I’m so grateful for all the decisions we’ve made – but since it often falls to me to do what it takes to get things going I can easily feel very overwhelmed. It usually takes me a day or so to realize I can’t do it all in one day and I’ll need to set priorities and just plug away at things.
I have a fresh vision for almost every area of our life – which is so encouraging for me. I feel like we’ve gotten the car moving and all I have to do is steer – and we all know it’s much easier to steer a moving vehicle than it is one that is standing still.
We all seem to be energized and ready to move forward. I think getting a glimpse of the “big picture” as a family really helps all of us to “run the race set before us” because now we know what race we’re in.
I continue to be grateful for the way the Lord led our family to do an annual planning weekend each year. I’m grateful too that the Lord and Dan encouraged and allowed me to put it all into a format that I can easily share with other families. If you haven’t purchased a copy of my e-book “Purposeful Planning” yet, I would encourage you to do so and plan a time for your family to catch a vision for the coming year. If you think it would be helpful to your family, but you really can’t afford the $10 price, please e-mail me and I will see that you get a copy. Also, if you are a military family I would like to see that you get a free copy.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18
Finding Joy in the Journey,
Phyllis
Phyllis Sather
Proclaiming God’s Faithfulness at:
http://www.Phyllis-Sather.com
© 2007 Phyllis Sather
All rights reserved
Contact me at: Phyllis@Phyllis-Sather.com
