1 of 7: Food

And so starts another new year. I've never been one to make (or keep) resolutions, but I do always love the new year, as it's always felt to me like a clean slate. I'm one who likes to organize/purge throughout the year, but the turn of the new year always gives me even more motivation to do so.

Enter: the book 7: An Experimental Mutiny in Excess, by Jen Hatmaker.  I got this book for Christmas last year, but I knew a little too much about it before even starting it and I have been reluctant to read it knowing what a challenge it was calling me to. 2014 is the year, folks. A month or so ago, something (ahem...God) was tugging at me to make some changes. It started with the sheer fact of admitting to myself that our budget was flexed as tight as it could be.

Justin and I are proud of the work we've done with our finances over the past 5 years (I have a spreadsheet of our budget for every month of the past five years. Seriously, we love this stuff) but now with two kiddos, money is tight. I felt like I needed an overhaul in re-learning "needs verses wants". I'd become lazy, thinking I needed to go straight to Amazon.com to order that thing that would make our lives easier as new parents of now two kiddos.

So, I'm ready for this marathon of months that should take us through almost the end of the year. We'll challenge ourselves each month with a new area of our life that the book leads us through, taking a week or two off in between challenges. I'm so thankful that Justin has agreed to do this with me. It will be so hard, but I just know, at the end of it, God will have shown me so much and I'm so anxious to learn and be renewed with the things He's been telling me all along.

Tomorrow we start with our first challenge: Food. We've agreed on 9 foods. (The book uses 7; we decided to modify it slightly.) So 9 foods will be all that we eat for four weeks. I will say coffee is NOT one of those foods and I'm not ashamed to admit it will be what will be the hardest for me not to have.

I'm hoping and praying for a few things this month. The most important thing I want to remember/know/feel with all my being, is that God is enough. The author of the book emphasizes the mantra, "Less of me, more of You". I want to feel that and live that, for myself, for my husband, for my daughters, for others.

I want to revert to prayer much, much more throughout my day. I have a feeling without caffeine running through my veins, I'll be relying on prayer for much of my day.

I want to be healthy. I want to eat to sustain and enhance my life. Not just blindly eat what is in front of me for no reason but to eat or overindulge.

I want to simplify. Part of me is really looking forward to the fact that, with this commitment, I only have a few choices of what I will eat. I won't have to decide between grabbing another granola bar because it's so easy and right there, when it's an apple instead on my list.

I want to be grateful. I'm sure there will be many times over the next four weeks that I will be angry (or hangry for that matter; hungry and angry). But I hope that I can think about the millions of starving people who would be so thankful to have 9 options of foods to eat. Perspective.

As I eat (and relish in) this last bite of Nutella toast, I'm praying for a quite and restful night that I might have a strong start to the challenge that starts right away in the morning. I put the coffee machine in the cupboard so I won't even see the blasted thing...