Vowel Check: The Simple Woman's Daybook

If you would like to join in and post your own Daybook, please head on over to visit Peggy at The Simple Woman's Daybook

For Today:  Sunday, December 4, 2016
 

Outside my window …  Alabama is being blessed with much needed rain.  We've been in a draught and these soaking rains are definitely helping end it.

I am thinking...  About the upcoming year and what goals I want to set and actually accomplish.

I am thankful...  For my mentor.

 

From the Workshop...

For more information on this painting, please see my sister blog post here.

 

I am reading...  I've gotten a lot of reading done since my last Daybook.  I completed my goal of reading through the NLT Bible more than a month ahead of schedule.  For an updated list of completed book reviews, please read here.

I am learning...

One of the best practices I learned from reading Brene' Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection was the "vowel check."


Image available as a free printout here.

A= Have I been Abstinent today? (However you define that -- I find it a little more challenging when it comes to things like food, work and the computer.)
E = Have I Exercised today?
I = What have I done for myself today?
O = What have I done for Others today?
U = Am I holding on to Unexpressed emotions today?
Y = Yeah!  What is something good that's happened today?"

I use this prompt when I journal.  It's been the biggest help when it comes to me getting a grip on my eating habits.  See, I know food journals are beneficial to identify triggers and curtail overeating.  However, any attempts I've made at keeping a food diary were replete with guilt and shame over any bad food that I ate (which drove me to binge), or with so much fear of eating the wrong thing that a bird would look at my plate and say, "Dang, girl.  I eat more than that."  The A and the U help me deal with any emotional eating I'm dealing with without getting caught up in fear or berating myself.  I'm getting to the root of whatever the problem is that day. 
 

Favorite quote(s) of the week: 

"If serving is below you, leadership is beyond you." - Dave Adamson

"Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with out open heart.  When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.  We all need help." - Brene' Brown

From Charles Spurgeon's Evening by Evening devotional for December 1st:

"O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men." - Psalm 107:8

If we complained less, and praised more, we should be happier, and God would be more glorified. Let us daily praise God for common mercies--common as we frequently call them, and yet so priceless, that when deprived of them we are ready to perish. Let us bless God for the eyes with which we behold the sun, for the health and strength to walk abroad, for the bread we eat, for the raiment we wear. Let us praise him that we are not cast out among the hopeless, or confined amongst the guilty; let us thank him for liberty, for friends, for family associations and comforts; let us praise him, in fact, for everything which we receive from his bounteous hand, for we deserve little, and yet are most plenteously endowed. But, beloved, the sweetest and the loudest note in our songs of praise should be of redeeming love. God's redeeming acts towards his chosen are forever the favourite themes of their praise. If we know what redemption means, let us not withhold our sonnets of thanksgiving. We have been redeemed from the power of our corruptions, uplifted from the depth of sin in which we were naturally plunged. We have been led to the cross of Christ--our shackles of guilt have been broken off; we are no longer slaves, but children of the living God, and can antedate the period when we shall be presented before the throne without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Even now by faith we wave the palm-branch and wrap ourselves about with the fair linen which is to be our everlasting array, and shall we not unceasingly give thanks to the Lord our Redeemer? Child of God, canst thou be silent? Awake, awake, ye inheritors of glory, and lead your captivity captive, as ye cry with David, "Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name." Let the new month begin with new songs.

"Life doesn't reward quitting.  You are the only one who does that." - Dr. Phillip McGraw
 

I am looking forward to... 

• The new year.  It's time for a do over.

And now for something totally different...
  

 

From Twitter:  @GerryHouse1 tweeted:  "If life hands you lemons, throw them away and get some bacon."

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