Prior to the new year, I wanted to chat with our girls about the importance of setting goals and to have them think about some goals/resolutions that they would like to set for 2015. In addition to setting goals, I wanted to give our family a theme for the year. When we lived in America, we would often tell our kids to "Be Strong, Be Confident and Happy." It was constantly repeated to the kids and they truly felt that it helped them during certain situations.
After moving to Australia, 20 months ago, OUR normal life was shaken up. Suddenly, we found our support village gone. We missed our family, friends and neighbours We were being challenged and stretched in every area of our lives. There were days when we were utterly thrilled with the Australian adventure that lay ahead of us and then there were days when we just wanted to go back HOME to the comfortable safe environment that we left behind. Tom and I felt that we needed to encourage the girls (and ourselves) so we came up with a theme for this difficult, yet exciting once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It was "Good Timber Does Not Grow with Ease, the Stronger the Wind the Stronger the Trees." We printed up beautiful signs with this quote and posted them everywhere around our house. We would often repeat this quote and tried HARD to embrace the WIND.
The last 20 months have not been easy -- it was tough moving internationally. There have been many low days, however, we have grown closer as family and learned how to cope with loneliness and disappointment at times. The growth may have not been in the ways that we have wanted but, we are making it work and blossoming.
Because we are finally feeling settled and adjusted to life here. Tom and I felt that we were ready for a new theme for 2015. We both put a lot of thought into this and scoured the Internet, quote books, our scriptures, conference talks, etc. for the right quote for our family. A scripture in Matthew kept coming to my mind but, I wanted a personalized theme for us.
The scripture that kept coming back to me was Matthew 5:16 - "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven." With that scripture in mind, Tom and I came up with a word from this scripture that we would like to focus on as a family. It is "SHINE." However, we wanted each letter of the word to have meaning. We composed an acrostic poem to incorporate all of our thoughts and dreams for our girls in the year of 2015 - see below for the details.
On News Years Day at dinner, we gave the girls individual copies of our poem, we set personal resolutions together and we celebrated with sparklers. It is our hope that our girls will SHINE during 2015 and continue to be the wonderful girls that they are as they navigate their way through this new year.
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