My vision for 2018

I recently was introduced to the idea of a vision board.  Perhaps others of you have heard of this idea, or even done one yourself.  The basic concept is that you have a board of some sort with pictures that represent your goals/things you want/vision for your life.  And I definitely loved the idea and decided to do one for the year 2018.

My main reason for doing this is because I want to be more proactive with setting my mind on goals and letting the Lord know what I want.  I strongly believe in the power of prayer and after studying a lot on the idea of prayer in general, I have felt like I need to be more specific in my prayers and in asking for what I really desire.  And of course still be submissive to His will and accept that He knows better than I do.  More thoughts on prayer will perhaps be forthcoming in another blog post.  For now, I wanted to show you a digital representation of our family vision board for the year.

First and foremost, I want our home to be a Christ centered home.  Having this be our number one priority will set everything else in place.  Ben got me a big framed picture of the art shown below of Christ walking on water for Christmas.  I have loved this picture for a while now (which he didn't even know) and I have also been wanting a more non traditional picture of Christ to hang up in my home for a while.  So it was the perfect gift! It reminds me that even when the waves and storms of life surround us, Christ is a constant.  He can calm the waves at his command and walks the waters by faith in God.

I also want to make the temple a much bigger priority for our family in 2018.  Unfortunately we live 3 hours away from the closest temple, which definitely makes it a lot more difficult.  On top of my nursing a baby and Ben's surgery schedule.  But if we make it a priority, I know we will be blessed.  Our temple is the Philadelphia temple, which is one of the newer temples.  And it is so beautiful.  We love Philly so definitely need to make it down there more often.  Once it warms up a bit, and it is safe for Dorothy to be out, I would like to try and go once a quarter.  Once that becomes more manageable, perhaps we can up that to once every other month.  

Matching into surgery!! Obviously this is a big one.  We want nothing more than for Ben to finally have a solid residency spot and hopefully that spot will be in general surgery.  I know Ben will make a great surgeon.  And I hope to one day look back at this time in life with the ability to say that waiting to become a surgeon was worth it.  Even though it's hard to wait, and being a surgery resident is hard on everyone in our family.  But hard is good! What doesn't kill us makes us stronger right?

After we get our job lined up in March, our big goal for this year is to buy a house.  The idea of buying a house is a little scary to me (hello adulthood), but overall it's really exciting and I'm dying to be a homeowner.  A general surgery residency is 5 years long, so that's a good amount of time in one place.  The longest in our marriage so far!  I despise moving, so that idea of being in once place for 5 years is also super appealing.  And having a say in my wall colors :) 

With that being said, I also want to be better at keeping a cleaner home this year.  A clean home really is a happy home.  And if I keep on top of it, it's so much easier.  Ben has had this week off so we've been purging our home and it has felt awesome.  Hopefully we can keep up the pace.  I also want to make sure I'm spending more time working on my home and keeping it clean than on social media- as this meme suggests :)

And finally, the resolution that keeps persisting every year- being healthy! I'm not making a weight loss goal though or anything like that.  I just want our family to be more conscious of eating fruits and vegetables and to be more active in general.  Going on hikes, bike rides, etc.  The only specifics I have set for myself is not eating fast food (and if I do eat at a fast food restaurant, to get a salad).  I even ate a salad at McDonald's today.  Because honestly, the indoor playground at McDonald's is a godsend when it's freezing outside and your toddler really needs to get out some energy.

So that's my board for now.  I might add things as the year goes on- especially since two of the things will be done by March, and that's only a quarter of the year!  I also have some personal goals that I am working on- like blogging more, but this is for the Fisher family as a whole.  What are some goals you all are working on?