Prayer challenge update, my general ramblings and a wake up call!

So this is a "catch up" post!  Life has got busy again (as usual) and I haven't been able to stay on my blogging schedule.

Prayer Challenge - Prayer Driving vs Journalling
I have been working on my prayer challenge and I can wholeheartedly say that I have learnt a fair amount about what works for me and what doesn't!

Let me start with some of the mistakes I made:

1.  Starting a prayer challenge on the same day that you are leaving for a family weekend out of London followed by a family BBQ.  It's really difficult to start a new habit or practice when you are not following your usual routine at all!

2.  Choosing an activity that involves introducing two new habits in one.  I don't go for regular walks so deciding to use prayer walking meant that I had to master the incorporation of regular walking and prayering.  It didn't really work out!

So I decided to count prayer driving as well as prayer walking!  The prayer walking experience was really refreshing and lovely.  It was nice to allocate a set time to just go for a walk and talk to God but it became apparent to me that it was not going to be consistent if it depended on me going for daily walks.  Some of my days t involved heavy travelling or lots of errands in one day, so fitting in substantial walking time was a real challenge and often didn't materialise.  However, I am someone who drives regularly and I found using this time to pray really helpful.  

Attaching prayer to a regular activity in my life has been really effective.

However this raised a couple of other challenges, primarily how to maintain a prayer list and document everything that God has been saying in relation to the different issues.  So I decided to try prayer journalling.  

Prayer journalling has been a breath of fresh air!  It has been wonderful sitting down with a pen and paper and writing out my prayers to God.  This method has really worked for me and to be honest I haven't had a desire to try anything else.  

My main focus has now moved on to looking at ways to ensure that I am regularly covering all the areas on my prayer list and an effective way of maintaining a prayer list.  Please write any methods you use in the comments below!  I would really appreciate your help!

My General Ramblings
A lot is going on in my life at the moment, primarily around me looking at what I want out of life and the steps I need to take to get there.  This year has been amazing so far!  I have become a mother and I have discovered more about myself in the last few months than I have in the last 30 years!  It has been amazing to see how God has used this time to really reveal so much to me.

This blog has started as a place to pour out my feelings about infertility and the struggle of being childless.  It then became a record of my journey through the adoption process and the first few months of motherhood.  I have been struggling a little with deciding which direction to take the blog in next.  Many of you have said that you want me to keep writing but I haven't been sure about exactly what I should actually write about.  In other words, I started to analyse this blog too much and so ended up with what I would call a blog in "identity crisis".

So I'm going to stop over-analysing and just go back to being me.  I'll write about the things on my heart and I hope that you will continue to enjoy reading what I have to say!

A wake up call!

I spent yesterday evening with a close friend talking in great depth about some of the major decisions I have to make in the next few months.  It was refreshing, enlightening and helped to solidify some of the things I have struggled to verbalise throughout this year.  However, a poignant issue that came out of the conversation was the fact that I am still a new mother.

This is an issue that my sister had raised several times earlier this year but I think I've finally started to get it.  I have been a mother for six months.  I look at some of the projects I have taken on in the last year and realised that I haven't really allowed space for the fact that I am a new mum.  Likewise, I am aware that some people around me have made the same mistake as me and failed to recognise that I am very new to motherhood.  It is very easy to look at Babygirl as the blossoming toddler that she is and forget that although she may be approaching two, I haven't been a mother for nearly two years. I have only six months experience!

As such when I look at what I will be doing for the rest of this year and when people approach me to ask me to do things - I will be pausing to ask the question in my mind, "Is this something that a mother of six months should be taking on right now?"

I hope by just pausing to answer that question will help me to know when to say "yes" and when to say "no".

So that's my catch post complete.

Until next time,
Cece xxx