A Little R & R

New Year's Resolutions are great, aren't they?! At least, it's exciting for me to sit down and ponder the new year ahead of me and consider ways I'd like to improve so that this can be the best year ever. I don't always accomplish all the goals I set for myself, but just the pondering of my life--where I am, where I've been, where I want to go--is so good for me.

This year I did set a goal that has finally been realized. In my journal/planner I have written in January: "Join Weight Watchers." And I did, on February 27th. I wanted to lose thirty-one pounds. I've lost thirty. When I got weighed on Wednesday morning I thought I would be able to declare I had reached my goal, but, alas, I was four-tenths off! According to my scale at home I was right on, but then it's not digital, so I couldn't be absolutely certain until I went to the meeting. When I saw that .4 there I asked if I could take off my pants and weigh again. They laughed and said I could if I wanted to, but, really, since the first time I was weighed I was wearing jeans it was only right that I be wearing jeans for the final weight, too. So next week I will reach my goal. I know I will because it's less than half a pound--about two sticks of butter--and everyone in my WW meeting will be expecting me to reach it. I don't want to have to report that I failed.

Returning and reporting works so well for me. When I tell my goals to others then I am more apt to accomplish them because I know someone is watching me. They expect me to do what I said I would do.

My journal keeping works on the same principle, but I'm not writing so that my friends or family will be able to see right away what I wrote and I can prove to them that I'm doing what I said I would do. It works because I am returning at the end of a period of time--day, week, month--and reporting to myself what I have done with my life. And one day I expect that my posterity will read a little, perhaps, and learn something about their grandmother.

I have been reading the mission journal my Grandmother Goodrich kept when Granddad and she served in New York when I was about eight years old. What a treasure this is! A lot of it is just an outline of the duties of the day, but I have learned much about my grandmother's feelings, habits, desires, and accomplishments at the side of my grandfather. I am so grateful she took the time to report what she was doing with this important time of her life. It has helped me to feel more connected to her, to my grandfather, and I think I'm learning something about myself through her, too.

Everything I do that helps me learn more about Edna points a little closer to the road that will lead to the home that has always been so ambiguous to me. Losing that weight, proving to myself I can shed what doesn't belong and find the original me underneath all that, looking for myself in the writings of others--all this has drawn me closer to that longed-for home. How long until I reach the final destination, I don't know, but the road there is proving very interesting.