Tag: july

Green thumb

taracogdell

I always thought I just killed plants.  I’ve had a bunch of tomato plants, flowers and bushes that just die even though I tried my hardest to keep them alive, watering them and all.

I had resigned to the fact that I didn’t have a “green thumb.”

Hogwash.

Maybe some of you believe this too.

I will challenge you, go to the Dollar Tree or Dollar General (I realize this isn’t the highest quality but for plant stuff you can’t beat it!)  Honestly for a $1 I had no qualms about these flowers dying.  *Something to blame it on, they were cheap.

I bought flower seeds for $.25 at Dollar Tree, put them in a drawer, and in July (our hottest month or at least second hottest in Texas) I planted those suckers.  I thought okay who cares lets just try and grow these flowers.

And off we went.  Those sweet little seeds started to sprout a couple days later.  I was booming with excitement.  Such joy in these little tiny things just miraculously popping up out of the ground.  And all I did was dig, drop, and water.

I love the flowers that are now blooming each day.  They are these perfect little pom pom flowers.  I show them off because I know they will make other people happy too.  They are all different color flowers out of the same flower bush.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago on Instagram, maybe this is how God sees us.  We are planted in our faith with Him, but maybe we aren’t sure much is happening.  We aren’t sure if we are even growing, but little by little we water this faith and it miraculously starts to grow.

And all we get to do is step back and say wow isn’t that amazing!

Just a new route

taracogdell

So my goal this year is to read two books a month.  That’s not an outlandish goal by any means.  But with three kids, it felt like a good goal to me.   So far this year this has looked like a chapter or two a night, or I’ll read some in the afternoon.  Pretty casual.  I’ve been hitting my mark each month, but some months I have to be more intentional about that goal.  Like in June.

Sweet June rolled around.  And we went on vacation, (ooooh a flight, I’ll read then, as I’m chasing my two year old down the aisle), I got to spend time with my best friend (totally worth not reading!!!) and so vacation was kind of a bust on reading.    No big deal, I’ll read when we get home I thought.  Needless to say, my books I picked were hard to mull through chapters, which I do not like to do anyways.  A parenting book that is going to take me six months or more to read, because it’s heady.  Therefore, I only finished one book in June.  Everybody Always, by Bob Goff.  (As I look back now, if that is the only book I read this year it was worth it, great read!)

Now this is where my downfall normally happens when I set a goal.

I failed.

Goal: two books a month, read: 1 book in June.  Those numbers aren’t matching sister!  There’s still one left over which equals fail.  (I’m math minded so I see a lot of life this way.)  

For some reason, I channeled this thinking towards another route.  My books were too tough to thumb through quickly.  So in July, I picked up a few young readers novels at the library about the Holocaust.  Tough topic, but I was confident I’d finish them in a week.  Boosting my self-esteem on not finishing my goal for June.  July pasted and I had read four books!  Boom.

And I read four books without feeling like I was just reading to finish, I was able to absorb.

I love this.  It was simple.  I need simple.  Sometimes our course just needs a little boost or readjustment, not a whole overhaul.

Shift your perspective, give yourself a boost, and continue on those goals you set in January.  You are worth it.  And I bet if you wrote them down, the goals you set are worth it too.