Goal Setting: Why?

My Handstitched bedcover, wool on linen, County Fair 2012

I’ve been perusing some books regarding setting goals (and perhaps, more importantly, meeting them), and I’ve thus far had some persistent thoughts regarding my “someday I wanna” goals:

1. Everything I wish to do, I am in some small form already doing, even if it is just doodling on scraps of paper  for my “art”. I need to be very, very grateful for what today is, what it offers, and who I am in it.  Gratitude is always God’s best for my heart.
2.  Setting goals is good.  Discontent in not already meeting them is not. And better to “pick at it” a wee bit at a time than try to gulp a big chunk at once.
3.  My goals need to work around or enhance my primary responsibilities, not substitute for them. There is a difference between finding time for the extras and robbing it from the primaries.  Which means I need to be clear on what those “primaries” are.
4. Every “what” (that I still wish to do) absolutely must have connected to it a meaningful “why” (the reason to see it through).

You know, there is plenty of fodder for discontent both in the real world and especially so in the internet (what a right word, that, enter(the)net...but I digress).  So I look myself square in the soul and say something akin to “Right.  Listen, Woman.  Why aren’t you completely satisfied? What do you really want to do, anyway?”

Well, what I really want to do is just walk with God, says I.

He walks with you.

Well, I want to be a good wife, a good mother, a good homemaker, a good friend….

Define good.

Well…one that walks with God in it all.

Oh.  Has He left you?

Oy.  Someone just turn off my left brain already.

Discontent is often tickled by the moving finish line, the line that will never be crossed on this side because even if I manage to complete one goal it just leaves open room for four others that are blaringly undone. Furthermore, someone is always going to do it faster, better, and more effectively than me and I don’t need to go further than Pinterest to prove it.   But even if I could have the most pinterest-est sort of life (which requires, it seems, at bare minimum a $1000 camera), at some point I’m going to still feel like I’m just not enough for me.  And isn’t that a lie against my Maker?

Thus tumbles into it all the “why” of it all. Why pursue anything at all?  I think….if the reason isn’t ultimately for God’s glory then I fear it is doomed.

Why?

Well, I want to walk with God, says I.  And I can’t walk with God (or make other goals) without seeking His glory in that walk.

If my pursuits have anything to do with my fear of missing out (pleasing passions) or my fear of not being missed (pleasing people), or if I am weary and burdened by the goals I have set (Jesus said His burden was light, remember?) then I must conclude that my words and my walk are miles one from the other.

Gratitude for what is here, now, present today in real life and in real time….and purpose pushed by the principles of the Kingdom of God.  Those are the meaningful “why”s that will drive the “what”s, the goals I make (and I believe yours) to fruition.

What drives your goals?  And are you thankful for the bits you are able and allowed to partake in already?

Blessings,