In my previous blog post, I shared how I lived out my #OneVerse and #OneWord for the year 2023. In this blog post, I will share what my word and Bible verse for the year are.

God revealed and confirmed with me my direction for the year through this exercise again a few days into the new year.

Choosing just a word and a Bible verse to focus on for the whole year is much easier than having too many goals or resolutions. Through this exercise or practice, I am able to focus my energy, time and resources more in living out what I believe in my heart God wants me to focus on and really live out.

This year, my #OneWord is BLESSED. It came from Jeremiah 17:7-8. I know I should choose only one verse from the Bible, but the sentence is long and was comprised of two verses.

Anyway, I was happy to be led again to these verses because my business name and logo were inspired by these same verses. So, I felt that it’s perfect for me.

Today, Jeremiah 17:7-8 was included in the First Reading. (Read the reading for today here.) That’s why I was reminded to blog about my #OneWord and #OneVerse today.

As I write this blog post, it’s already the last day of the second month of the year and it’s a leap day. It’s February 29. It’s a bonus day that we had been given this year.

I saw a post on social media (Facebook) early this month or this year asking us what how we would spend this extra day this leap year. That moved me to reflect. I thought that I still have a lot of time to think about how I will spend this day only to realize that I had been so busy again with homeschool concerns and activities. I was reminded about this just a few days ago when I looked at the calendar.

Yesterday, I quickly made a list in my digital phone calendar what I wanted to do today.

I wanted to have time for myself and for the things that I like doing. Like get a haircut, at least.

But when I woke up this morning, I was moved to hang the laundry as my way of appreciating the efforts of my eldest son last night to do a load of laundry. My eldest has been helping us a lot with household chores since I had to rest more due to health reasons. He has been really dependable in doing the laundry and cooking our food on days when I needed more time to rest. We now call him our sinigang expert since he has cooked this dish many times already for us. Today, he cooked ginisang mongo for us with some help from his younger brothers.

At the last minute, my love for my children still moved me to spend most of the hours of this day being with them. I prioritized depositing on their love tanks. I played chess and checkers with each of my children. I played Scrabble with all of them. I homeschooled them after we played.

Time went by so fast. I only realized that the day is almost over when my eldest child and I were halfway the episode of the series we were watching. It was dinnertime already! We decided to just finish the episode. Then, we had our late dinner.

After that, my two younger sons and I rushed to the salon in the village hoping that it’s still open. We missed it by a few minutes. Sigh.

It was a good thing that the new store beside it selling various kinds of drinks was still open. That was our consolation. My youngest and I had avocado graham shake while my middle child had mango graham shake. We bought matcha frappe for my eldest who stayed home with his Dad.

As I reflect on my leap day, I realized that although it did not turn out as I exactly wanted it to be, I’m still happy and content because I was able to spend it with the ones closest to my heart and I was able to show love to others.

I also had some time to rest by lying in bed and investing in myself by watching or joining a learning session while in bed. And because my eldest agreed to cook our food today, I had time to rest my body and recover from the tiredness of hanging the laundry early in the morning. I just had to give him and his brothers some instructions and to check on them and the food they were preparing.

Just like in the past days of this month and last month, I did my best to take things as slowly as I can. I hardly did any work on my business. I wanted to give myself more time to rest and recover from my super busy schedule last year particularly in the last six months of 2023.

I chose to be kinder to myself and to give myself more time to rest. I chose to entrust my future to God.

It was still a busy two months, because I am a homeschool mom with 3 students. Moreover, we do not have a helper or maid. Therefore, it’s inevitable to do many things at home to manage the household and to educate the kids. However, I tried to be more relaxed in our homeschool even though we already have a relatively relaxed homeschool approach compared to many who are doing online school, school at home or who strictly follow curriculums.

We did more life schooling and interest-led learning in the past months. I let the kids read a lot of books! Then, I just ask them to write book reports to help me gauge what they have picked up from those that they read. We also watched videos and movies. Like in the books that the kids read, I also ask them to write movie reports after we watched some movies. I’m using a TV series to help my eldest become more familiar with Filipino words and to learn about history and many other life lessons. I wrote a review of this TV series here. There were many days when I homeschooled the kids from bed as well. It reminded me of the time when I was on bedrest due to my pregnancies.

It was a good thing, too, that even before this year, we had been implementing a chore chart at home. Our kids are already used to doing chores. It’s an essential part of their education. As soon as they are old enough, age-appropriate chores are assigned to them and their chores increase as they grow older. This is one of my biggest blessings.

In my business and in our homeschool, I chose to trust God more by focusing on what I think are essential.

Recently, I prepared some proposals for potential clients. While preparing for them and while communicating with them, my values were challenged. One of these clients wanted me to run an out-of-town team building workshop on a weekend. Not just on sa Saturday but Saturday AND Sunday. I do not want to work on Sundays because it’s the Lord’s Day and it’s a rest day. It’s also family day and ministry day for our family. It was very tempting. I could earn a lot if I accept that project. But, I thank God for the grace He gave me to resolve in my heart and mind to inform the client if they will contact me again that I don’t want to work on a Sunday.

Another way that I’m choosing to trust God is that until now, I have not made or listed specific or concrete plans for my business this year. I have some ideas. But, I chose to prioritize resting instead of planning and working in the past two months. I simply believe that if God wants me to succeed this year, even if I choose to rest a bit longer because I feel that this is what my body is telling me to do at this time, it will happen.

So, instead of planning how to earn more and achieve more this year, I spent this month looking for retreats that I can attend or join. I already found two retreats that I am interested to join in March. In fact, I have made my reservation already for the first one happening on the second weekend of March. The second one is happening during Holy Week.

These decisions are aligned with my One BIG Goal this year: to prioritize my relationship with God.

I was reminded during the year-end retreat that I joined last year that all my achievements were rooted in my strong and steady relationship with God. Thus, if I want to continue to be successful in my endeavors, I need to make sure that I continue to remain in God.

Of course, that’s not the only reason that I want to prioritize God in my life and my relationship with Him. I want to do this because He is my real treasure and my greatest love. But that insight and realization also gave me another reason or motivation to take good care of my relationship with God for from it stems many other beautiful things in my life.

It’s just the first two months of the year 2024. Yet, I feel that God has been extra gracious to me despite my shortcomings and mistakes. I’m excited to experience more of Him and His love this Lent. I also pray that just like last year, I’d be able to live out my #OneWord and #OneVerse for the rest of the year for the glory of God.