Make It a Habit

Habits affect us.

Good habits impact us in good ways.

That's why it's so important to intentionally develop good habits.

(I could stop right there for today. But, as always, a good story goes with this observation.)

Most of you know that we are gearing up to become "Wedding Central" around the Hawley house. The initial excitement of the engagement; the squealing; the jumping up and down; the phone calls; the facebook status changing; the showing of the ring.............. All these things have taken place and NOW (cue loud reverberation) the planning begins.

Meagan's birthday is December 20th. Most years we tried to celebrate on October 20th so people would actually come to her party. Smile. The parental wedding anniversary is marked on December 30th. And of course, Christmas falls in there too.

She has spent her life observing that things get a bit squished/short-changed when celebrated near the end of the year.

Sooooo, she had rather strong feelings against planning a wedding for late fall or early winter. (Nathan's birthday is in September.)

July seemed the best time in her thinking. In fact, she and Nathan were pretty settled on July 23th. Until...........we started searching out venues to accommodate an outdoor ceremony; in FL; in July; with more than 150 guests!

Panic started pushing in around the edges.

Enter lifetime habit.

Meagan has a habit of stopping in the middle of a panic moment and looking up scripture on the matter at hand. This serves a dual purpose:

• re-directing focus
• feeding better thinking

So yesterday afternoon, she took a few precious planning moments and starting looking for scriptures on JOY. She didn't want to miss the joy of planning her wedding by worrying over every single individual she needed to please and every detail she needed to work out. (Who can do all that anyway?! Smile.)

In the midst of her "copying and pasting" this beautiful kiss from heaven showed up from the hidden recesses of II Chronicles -

".....on the twenty-third day of the seventh month, he sent the people to their homes joyful and glad in heart for the good things the lord had done......"

(I realize the Jewish calendar was different but for us that meant - JULY 23RD! Smile.)

You can not make up such as this!!

Habits affect us.

Good habits impact us in good ways.

Choose to start a good habit - you may need it down the road.