Intention
It’s quite difficult to describe what the last two years have been like. While they have been breathtakingly enlightening, they’ve also been challenging and painful. I’ve been stretched in ways I couldn’t have foreseen. I’ve lost some things and some people, both figuratively and literally, became a mother, and a wife. It’s been tricky attempting to balance it all. It’s been equally frustrating not being able to do it all.
Before I begin ranting about what I haven’t accomplished, I want to show myself some grace and gratefulness for what I have accomplished. I got promoted to Manager of Program Evaluation in the middle of my pregnancy. I got engaged at the wine cellar where I met my husband and married on Maui island in Hawai’i. I birthed a beautiful baby girl, traveled around the country for work, kept my blog afloat, and nurtured some beautiful friendships along the way.
However, planning a wedding, completing pre-marital counseling, turning 30, planning my husband’s 30th, planning my baby girl’s 1st birthday, fighting through my career, traveling with an infant twice, and trying to simply write poetry amid it all really took a toll on me in 2019. Some days, weeks, or even months, I felt like I just had to take life as it came at me – roll with the punches. I am NOT that kind of woman. I am a planner. An organizer. A dreamer and take-steps-to-reach that dream kind of woman. A pristinely-clean-house-100%-of-the-time type of woman. But keeping up with a running, not walking, running one-year old (13 months, ‘cause I know someone obsessed with how many months a kid is will ask) has me often feeling inadequate. Like less of myself; less of Kristen.
Did I mention struggling to keep up a social life? Trying to stay in touch with my core group of girlfriends scattered across the country doing big things (who STILL find ways to show up for me and who I LOVE dearly). Because they’re scattered, I’ve tried my best to make new friends closer, geographically, to me. It’s hard, though. Most women in their 30s are not married and have no children. Having to explain to them why I can’t do something because it’s not mom’s weekend out, or because there’s no more room in our family’s budget has often left me hanging and the object of side-eyes and unanswered texts. And it’s not even like I had been seeking these friendships, however fleeting they were. They just kept coming to me over the last two years. Just like everything else – randomly coming or going.
Here is where self-accountability must take over in order for things to change in 2020. I have not been moving or thinking with intention or purpose. Though some may look at my life from the outside and think there’s been intention in it, there has not been much. All of these life changes are extremely new to me. That doesn’t excuse the fact that I haven’t been intentional in my thoughts and actions. An intention is literally a design. I haven’t been designing my life as of late.
Therefore, I’m trying something new. I’m actually picking a word that will be ascribed to everything I do and in every aspect of my life. My word for 2020 is ‘intention’. Everything - prayers, thoughts, actions, planning, friendships, self-care, spirituality, motherhood, wife-hood, finances, career-building strategies, KROUN brand-building strategies, exercise, healthy nutrition, journaling, reading, writing poetry, familial relationships – all will be met with intention. The intention I feel when I know God’s will for my life and can walk in that purpose and fulfill it. I’ve mapped out several practical designs to be intentional and I feel God has blessed those designs. I’ll see you throughout the year to check-in.
Peace, Love, and Light.