Switching Goals

As kids we all dreamed about what we would be when we grow up. For me, I was going to be a veterinarian. I kept that goal until my first semester of college when I kept walking by the Child Development Labs on campus. It seems my heart was tugging a different way. By the end of that semester I had changed my major to early childhood education, and may have slightly broken my daddy's heart. He knew teachers did not get paid much.

Now, as I'm on the other side of my teaching career, I have to come up with new life goals. For the last five years, okay maybe 10 years, I've been counting down to the day I can retire. Maddy and I had made plans to do more traveling in the spring and fall, taking grandkids camping and fishing, and being able to spend more time together. All of those plans have been scrapped. I've had to come up with new goals, new plans, a new vision.

I talked about having a new normal. My normal keeps changing. I started a new routine after Maddy's death. I went to work, came home, went to church, did some shopping, and repeated the process week after week. Once I retired a new routine had to be established. Now we're going to throw a grandkid in the mix, so that's going to change my normal yet again. I've decided now to focus on overall life goals and not my day-to-day existence.

I don't know why I thought I could get into a new routine when, honestly, I didn't really have one before.

So my list of new life goals include:

* Live life to the fullest because you don't know when your life it's going to end.

Get out of that comfort zone. My comfort zone always included Maddy so I'm scrambling to find where I feel most comfortable. But that comfortable life is not one that is living to the fullest. I'm going places I probably wouldn't have before. Hopefully, I'll make it to the last 15 states on our bucket list and complete it for us both. Baby steps will lead to running before long.

* Spend time with the people you care most about. It can be going to eat, stopping by to chat, or going to an event. No time spent with others is wasted.

* Help those in need. Volunteer, donate items to a good cause, serve someone in need. Make your life about others instead of yourself and you find you can get out of that "poor pitiful me" attitude.

* Do something to make someone else smile. It can be a simple gesture, a random act of kindness, or simply taking time to say hello.

* Do at least one productive thing each day. I make sure to do something everyday so I don't become a couch potato or slip into a bout of depression. Some days I go to my part time job; other times I run errands. If I have no plans to leave the house I may do some chores or find a cabinet that needs cleaning out. At the end of the day I feel good knowing I got something done.

I'm sure I'll add to this list as time goes by, or edit the ones listed, but if I set these goals and write them down, I'm more likely to follow them.

Have you set goals for your life? The Bible tells us that we don't know when Jesus will return, but we should live our lives here on Earth in a way that honors Him until that time.