Not what I'd planned... and that's okay!

It's been almost a month since my last post. Not the plan. In fact, if you'd looked at my handy dandy calendar, you'd see that I had a whole month of blog posts planned but not written. Oops.

But, I am working on a website with an integrated blog, and I thought it would be ready, and communications with my web designer are just not... there. No one's fault, I think we took turns slipping through each other's cracks, and while the site is live, I'm not yet ready to fully committing to moving my blog there or going fully public yet.

Then there's life... crazy, busy, and a work project I thought we'd be finished with by now drags on. Again, no one's fault, just stuff I have no control over, so I'm going with the flow.

In all of this, I've tried keeping up with my Lent project, won some, lost some, and despite the best of intentions with a wonderful devotional, have not even been able to read it daily.

Yesterday, I was talking with a friend who talked about how great her quiet time has been lately. Part of me was envious, and part of me felt really convicted. My quiet time has been nearly nonexistent. Even during our "vacation," which had plenty of free time, I gave very little of it to God. In my conviction, however, I did not immediately act. Well, sort of. I did act on my frustration with not having as much writing time, and skipped TV to write. But I was too lazy to go downstairs, find my devotional book, and spend time with the Lord.

I went to bed a little irritated with myself at realizing I'd been so boneheaded. But it was really late, and I was tired, so I chose to go to bed.

Which leads me to this morning. I woke up an hour before the alarm clock went off. I laid in bed, debating about trying to go back to sleep, then started thinking about God, and all of the thoughts of how I've been letting Him down lately. Of course that led to me thinking about everything else I'd been slacking on, and how I felt bad about that. Fortunately that was the point when I got smacked upside the head for beating myself up. I can't do anything about what I didn't do yesterday, last week, or even last month. I can, however, commit to doing what I need to do today.

I got up, found my devotional book, and caught up on my reading. I hadn't meant to do so much, but it was so good, and I felt so parched- it was like gulping down glass after glass of water on a hot day. I couldn't get enough. When I arrived at today's lesson, my little one came downstairs, and I realized that I was finally full.

Over the past three months, I've tried starting a lot of good habits. I have had more failures than successes at all of these. Most people would look at the number of failures and give up. But I am looking at my successes and realizing that while I haven't done what I've planned, I HAVE done more than I had before. And that counts for something.

My encouragement for you today is to let go of your guilt at what you didn't do, and rejoice in what you have accomplished.