NYR - A Day Late & A Dollar Short!

Who said resolutions have to be put in place, and started, the FIRST day of January?? The 9th of January works too, right?

This year, Chasity and I were able to celebrate the New Year together and had a lot of time to catch up, hang out, get the website up and running, and just talk about life (as we girls tend to do). As we discussed our goals for the blog, we also spent some time talking about the areas of our life we really wanted to get right this year, on a personal level; our ‘resolutions’ if you would like to call them that.

We didn’t want to just throw a bunch of things out there, because we knew that come February, all of those things we set out to do would have completely fallen apart and life would catch back up to us. So we are doing things a little differently this year!

This year, instead of creating a list of all the things we want to change, we are coming up with a word that we want to highlight our life around. A single word, that will help focus all of the areas of our life, to help us achieve small victories and changes throughout the year.

Hard at work New Years Eve -- Getting Ready for 2017

Chasity

What is your word for the year? PRIORITIZE

What does that word look like, in regards to actions you want to take? This year, my goal is minimize and simplify as much as I can. Prioritize the areas of my life that bring meaning and purpose and to get rid of all the ‘clutter’ that keeps me and my family bogged down.

What is an immediate action you can take right now, that will help you achieve your word? I am making it a point to go through every closet, and every room to consolidate, donate, or trash. The amount of stress that I can reduce by simplifying our lifestyle will be worth the torture of combing through things that have been untouched for years. It stresses me the f out rummaging through a bunch of crap trying to find things. We don’t use half of it, but it stays tucked away in my cabinets or drawers and I think “maybe one day I will need it.” The first area I am tackling is the girls’ playroom! I cringe every time I walk into that room. Barbie dolls over here, colored-on stuffed animals over there. It is a complete disaster and the girls can’t even keep track of the toys they are actually playing with. Will be the hardest room to get through, as the girls get the hoarding gene naturally and have a complete meltdown if anything gets tossed or donated. It’s not how my husband and I are trying to raise them and we as a family have too many entitlement issues, and take things for granted. I want to let go of the things that no longer make us happy, or serve a purpose in our home and donate them to someone who needs it.

I have started the process. Pray for me! Our house looks like a tornado went through it.

 Kristin

What is your word for the year? INTENTION

What does that word look like, in regards to actions you want to take? This year, my goal is to live an intentional life. For years, the word I always used to describe me/my life was fortitude. However, I realized having perseverance just meant that I had the strength to deal with the actions/decisions that were happening TO me. This year, I want to be in charge of my journey and be intentional about the decisions, direction, and relationships in my life (as much as possible and with the guidance of God’s purpose and direction).

What is an immediate action you can take right now, that will help you achieve your word? For me, this starts with creating a vision board; being TOTALLY honest with myself of what I want (and need) in my life and creating a vision of what that looks like. I have spent years of my life surviving and living a life I thought I should be living - and if I learned anything about last year, it’s that you can fool the world with pretending you are something you aren’t, but you can’t fool your soul/spirit.  By having something that I can see – and be emotionally connected to – will help me to remember the areas that I need to be intentional in. By deciding what I want my life to look like, I can help guide my decisions throughout the year to create the life I want to set out to live. Without creating this visual, I know I will get caught up in going with the flow and actions of others; just doing what is needed to get by – rather than doing what is needed to get going.

Happy New Year everyone! If you’d like to join us in changing up how we set our resolutions – comment on our facebook page what your one word will be for this year. 

Our Meet Cute

Meet Cute: A scene in a movie where two characters, meet for the first time in an entertaining, amusing, or cute scene

As each year passes and I get another year older (hopefully wiser as well), I come to realize more and more how our lives are not just random acts that occur to us, but rather random acts that belong to a much bigger story. I don’t believe in coincidences, but rather divine and spiritual intervention! That is exactly how and why Chasity and I are in each other’s lives. As I look back to write about our first ‘meet cute’, there is no other way to describe us being in each other’s lives other than a perfectly planned, purposeful collision of two souls; both of whom needed each other more than they could have known and still don’t fully understand.

For anyone that knows Chasity and me, they know that there probably aren’t two more unlikely people who could have wound up being best friends for 20+ years. As you guys will come to love and discover through our blog, Chasity can be described as having a vivacious personality, someone who commands the attention in any room she is in. She is unapologetic to who she is and says just about everything that she thinks. She is all of the things that I am not! And I think that is what we both love about each other and what makes our friendship work so perfectly.  Our friendship really is like a classic movie script about best friends; childhood friends (one usually more popular/the other more reserved), experiencing life together, a falling out, a reconnection and strengthening of friendship that ultimately leads to an eternal and life long bond. So to describe the way we met is nothing short of a movie meet cute.

Chasity’s Version

As each year passes, Kristin gets older and I get wiser (wink wink). God knew what he was doing when he crossed our paths. Both of us were broken, scared as hell, and so very sad.

My childhood was a tad dysfunctional. A child of domestic violence with an addict for a dad and a mother who did all she could to shelter us, my younger years were filled with pain and suffering. Therefore, I grew up quickly not by choice but out of necessity. I lived a life of fear -- fear of how others would treat me, fear of going home to an unpredictable Dad, fear of others finding out about my life. On the outside I did my best to appear happy while on the inside I felt broken. That is how Kristin and I bonded without knowing until we were older. 

Twenty-two years ago God sent a beautiful soul to me. Kristin calms my storm and I add some fuel to her well-contained flame. Our personalities were completely different, but our souls saw their reflection in one another. We connected instantly. 

I met Kristin in eighth grade gym class. She was sitting on the bleachers with both arms wrapped around one bent leg and the other leg dangling in the air. She looked scared and nervous which mirrored my feelings at that instant. I was popular in eighth grade but felt at times like an outcast amongst people who looked as though they had a normal home life. Kristin and I struck up a conversation in the locker room that day and became soul sisters from that point forward. God knew I needed her, and she needed me. I am forever grateful for that eighth grade class and a best friend that has been by my side through the good, bad and the ugly. 

Kristin’s Version

For me to describe the first day we met, I have to first go back to a memory before our first meeting that involves a 12 year old girl sitting on a flight from Southern California to Nashville, TN. Tears pouring down her face and a completely shattered heart, leaving behind a life that would one day just become distant memories. She is broken, sad, scared, and completely unaware of how this flight will change the course of her life forever.

It was my first day of 8th grade at a new school, in a new city, in a new state. Moving to the south was about a foreign to me as going to the moon. Middle school was hard enough, but having to change everything in the middle of it all called for a strength that could only be provided through God. I don’t recall why, but I remember I missed my first class and joined up with my fellow classmates in P.E. Late to that class as well, I had to go to the locker room to change and meet up with everyone on the gym floor. That is where our meet cute happened! Shy, scared, and slightly awkward new girl meets captain of the cheerleading team and Ms. Popularity.

At that moment in my life, all I needed was a sense of belonging and a sense of connection to the life I had just left behind and here was a girl, who was the most popular girl in school, and who had happened to have lived in the same, small town I just left!!  Seriously, what are the odds?

I don’t believe for a single moment that our friendship was anything other than a spiritual alignment of two people, who were destined to be in each other’s lives – for better or worse, till death do us part. That is the beautiful part about life – that it can be such a beautiful disaster. Even though you may not see how it all plays into a higher purpose at the moment, when you look back you can see the true beauty and masterpiece that was created.

-Kristin

With Love,

Kristin & Chasity