Dining Room Vision

There’s no time quite like the present (i.e. pandemic stay-at-home crisis) to do some home dreaming, amiright?

A few months ago, I started drawing up vision boards for our home but never got around to sharing them here. I envisioned a round table with black oak “Ruthie” chairs — traditional and coastal, with clean lines and a pop of brass. Hugh Forte’s beach photography is stunning, and I love investing in art whenever I can. The potted olive tree is fake, because let’s be honest, I have enough to keep alive with my kids; let’s not add plants into the mix.

When I found a Restoration Hardware vintage French fluted expandable dining table (the dinner parties!) on Facebook Marketplace in a black wash for $200, I scooped it up and revisited my design plan. I still love the contrast of black with white oak or a natural hardwood, and these chairs offset the curves of the table and add texture with the woven element on the seat. The chandelier feels clean and modern, balancing the vintage-ness and density of the black table with a lighter, minimal piece that carries the black all the way up visually.

However (isn’t there alway a “however”?), budget still dictates decor plans, and for one of the McGee Eloise chairs, I could buy three of these Target Project 62 chairs (as soon as they restock). I bought one that was in stock at a local Target to try it out, and I love how the curves of the chair mimic the curves of the table while still offsetting the ornate details with clean lines. Juniper Print Shop makes prints that can be framed in IKEA frames, and I could keep the large format art look with this and this.

Just like with fashion, I love mixing high-low elements — pricey pieces with more affordable ones. Right now our dining room (and most of our house) is a weird brown-beige, but I’m looking forward to fresh white walls and hopefully a quick restock of these chairs in order to “finish” our dining room.

In the meantime, I’m still dreaming. Living room, piano room, and entryway vision boards up next.

20 minutes in 2020.

The thought that I keep coming back to, over and over again in this season of my life is this: 

What would happen if we asked God to help us steward what we already have before we asked him for more?

Baby steps with my baby boy.

What if we culled through our time and committed an hour every single day to work on the thing that we believe He’s called us to? What if we committed 20 minutes? Or even two? What if we just showed up?

Since reading Atomic Habits, I’ve been thinking about the practice of breaking down a habit into components so small that it would be ridiculous to not take action. Do one push up. Open up a google doc and let your fingers linger over the keyboard without compelling them to write. Change into your workout clothes as soon as you get home from the office.

Take one tiny step over and over. Put in the reps. Remind yourself that you are a person who shows up. Then scale up from there.

We don’t have to go big or go home.

We can go small.

We can go so small that no one else would notice.

We can start with one single minute – of prayer, of brainstorming, of squats, of whatever.

And then we can repeat it, over and over again. We can repeat it until the neural pathway in our brain is established, until it’s part of who we are.

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The other day my five-year-old asked me, “Why are days important?”

“Because days make up our lives,” I answered quickly. I really don’t know if that’s the answer he was looking for, but it’s the answer I’ve been living – breaking down life goals into fragments of time.

I’ll sit down in my office nook for a handful of minutes to type a few sentences or jot down reminders. I leave my Bible open so that when I walk by, I can read a few words. I’ll do squats in between playing tag with my boys and lunges as I chase them down the street in their scooters. I’m crazy about how I spend my time these days, because I’ve learned how each win can be broken down into several tiny actions that mean little on their own, but compounded add up to undeniable progress. 

The minutes matter because they make up the hours that make up the days. 

In 2020, I am practicing believing that I have the time that I need to accomplish what I am meant to do in a day. Using my minutes is a practice of choosing abundance over scarcity, get to over have to.

This year I’ve used the margins to write literally, too, in the white space of my Bible. I’m practicing believing that the tiny revelations add up. 

I’m practicing believing that there is a trajectory towards peace and wholeness that starts with the belief that there is nothing too small for God to use, no insight too insignificant, no amount of time too small.

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For me, the magic number is 20. Long enough for me to feel focused and in the flow and unhurried and short enough to squeeze in between meetings or events. Twenty minutes is the sweet spot of being a long enough period of time to start being able to focus, to develop flow. Twenty minutes is a solid chunk, and do it three times on repeat, and you’ve got yourself an entire hour.  Twenty minutes is enough time, when stacked repeatedly, to start making visible progress. 

In 20 minutes, I can bike a little over 5 miles and run about 2. In 20 minutes, I can write about 500 words. I can read a few chapters of a book. I can prep an easy meal. I can play a game with my kids.

My husband and I play the game sometimes where we say, remember when? Remember when we used to go to the movies? Like on a weekday with no advanced planning? Remember when we used to take naps in the middle of a weekend afternoon? Remember how much time we had?

We did. We had so. much. free. time.

But – we still have time. 

(There’s a saying that if you want to get something done, ask a mother).

The limitations on our lives can make us hungry and scrappy, leading us to work harder and do more with less. Constraints force us to make trade-offs and the hard choice between the better and the best. Constraints force us to prioritize. Constraints force efficiency. 

Here’s what I’ve committed to in 2020, in 20 minute chunks of time (honestly though, some days it’s two minutes, and I still count it):

DAILY

• Centering prayer

• Morning quiet time & Bible study

• Reading, both my own books and reading out loud with the boys

• Working out (usually Peloton)

• Writing – journaling, blog posts, the occasional essay

WEEKLY

• A marriage “business meeting” to hammer out schedules and plan date night

• Making my to-do list for the week (letterpress notepads are my splurge)

• Planning meals and ordering groceries on Instacart

• Decluttering

MONTHLY

• Writing intentions (this free Intentional Living Worksheet from Day Designer is my go to!) and goal(s) for the month

• Counting the fruit and debriefing progress

We can go small, and we can go slow. 

It’s all progress.

January as Baseline.

SETTING BASELINE (PRACTICE STARTS HERE).

All the memes about January were true. January felt like it was 200 days long, and at the start of February, I got rocked by the flu and was completely out of commission for a weekend. 

So this is how I’m starting February: feeling both behind on the month and a little shocked that we’re only into the second month of 2020. When I finally got around to debriefing this past month, this is what I noted:

I practiced centering prayer 11 times, wrote for 20 minute sessions or longer for 14 days, read with the boys for 20 minutes or longer for 15 days, did 17 workouts on the Peloton or outside, and had 23 morning quiet times. Honestly, my immediate response was to be bummed out by those numbers. The goal was to hit 31 for each of those five habits, and I fell short.

Then I thought, this is baseline.

Outside of Peloton, which tracks your streaks for you, I had never actually tracked any of these particular habits. This was baseline – the starting point from which you compare your progress – and the exciting thing about baseline is that usually, it’s all up from there.

I click with pretty much everything James Clear writes, but I especially resonated with his statement: “Consistency develops ability.” Or, said by Gretchen Rubin: “What we do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.” 

I’m working on it.

The good news is that there are still eleven months left in this year, starting with February. January was baseline, and there’s still room for practice and progress.

We get to try again.

PERSPECTIVES (BOOKS, PODCASTS, POSTS)

Books – I read three books: Loveology; Dance, Stand, Run; and The Family Upstairs. 

Loveology by John Mark Comer is the best book on marriage I’ve read so far. He connects the purpose of marriage with work and calling in a compelling way, and both his presentation and coverage feels very millenial, in a good way.

Podcasts – My first favorite was the Fight Hustle, End Hurry ten-podcast series. John Mark Comer’s explanations of the spiritual disciplines made total sense to me. For the past weekends of the year, our family has been practicing Sabbath (and I’ve added a digital Sabbath), and now I’m so much more sensitive and aware of when I’m not giving people I love my full attention. 

The second podcast favorite was the She Reads Truth episode “Rivals & Restoration” about Jacob and Rachel and Leah. I think sometimes we glaze over the drama of the Old Testament as arcane or exceptional, and we forget that what makes us human hasn’t changed, and the character of God hasn’t changed either.

Posts – James Clear’s Habit Guide is the cliff notes version of Atomic Habits. Both have been hugely helpful for me, as I work on my goals for this year. For February, I’m working on “never missing twice.”

Speaking of never missing twice, the 29-Day Challenge pictured in this post can be downloaded from Austin Kleon’s post, here. 

(This blog post contains affiliate links, so if you do purchase Atomic Habits or another book mentioned, I’ll receive an itty bitty commission).

2020 Vision.

This is the year of 2020 vision.

Blowing out the candles on 32 / 2019.

Five months ago, when I was unpacking the boxes in our garage after we moved to our new home this year, I found a worksheet that I filled out in 2013.

The worksheet was called Your Ideal Day, and it listed out prompts like describe your morning routine and what does your environment look like?

You should know that when I filled it out, I was still living in Shanghai. I had a master’s degree but no job. We had no idea where we were going to live when we returned home. We had no savings and weren’t even close to buying a house. It was before I got pregnant for the first time.

I wrote the vision when I had no money, no job, no prospects, no home.

And yet – that piece of paper that I completely forgot I had – described almost exactly the life that I live now, down to our master bedroom balcony and the East-West positioning of our Spanish-style house so that we can watch the sunset as we cook dinner in the kitchen and eat a meal in the backyard. 

I don’t know why some dreams come true and others die, but I do believe there’s something about writing down the vision that propels us forward in faith. I don’t believe that we can strive or hustle our way to anywhere we want to go, but I do believe that we were made in the image of a Creator who used words to speak life, and we can use words to speak life over ourselves, too. I don’t believe that we can snap our fingers and get everything we ask for, but I think we can ask for fresh glimpses of God’s goodness and His hand in making a way where there is none.

As Ruth Chou Simons puts it: “We can’t go where we have no vision.”

For the last few months, I’ve been asking God for a new vision for 2020 and the decade ahead. My word for 2019 was light. And it’s light that led me to practice – the action that follows hearing (see: Matthew 7:24, James 1:22), the means of progress, the way of becoming. Practice – my word for 2020.

I see this year as a year of starting small and looking insignificant, which when you’re a 3 on the Enneagram is a hard pill to swallow. I have a feeling that this year, like the last, is going to be humbling and unglamourous. For all the flashiness of a new decade, I think obedience for us is going to look like living simply, slowing down our pace, saying no to the good so that we can say yes to the best, and fighting to practice habits and spiritual disciplines on a daily basis.

We started with Sabbath, but this ethos has rolled out into other parts of our lives, too – earlier bedtimes, fewer shopping trips, quieter mornings. I’m excited to see how we’ll experience God this year, and I’m excited to see how this lifestyle shift will prepare us for the years ahead.

If you have a word for 2020 or a vision for the new year, I’d love to read it in the comments below.

Start with Sabbath.

On January 1, per our annual family New Year’s tradition, we drove north to stay at a hotel by the beach for a night.

We’re on our fifth year of these mini family getaways. We used to stay at the Blue Lantern Inn, a cute bed & breakfast that looks out onto Baby Beach in Dana Point. One of the key selling points is that they  coffee to your room in the morning, but with three kids now, we’ve since outgrown it. Now we stay at a hotel in Huntington Beach that is both pet-friendly and kid-friendly. The room we book has a huge bathtub and a pull-out bed that all the kids, in theory, can sleep on, and the hotel offers a triple threat of treats –  wine hour, complimentary cold brew, and unlimited s’mores.

The intention in past years was to use this time to dream and pray over goals as a family, but that’s hard to do with three kids five and under. Now, Dave and I pre-game the dreaming and goal-planning with our own retreat sometime in the fall, and use the annual new year’s getaway to rest and play.

This year, after check-in, we went to happy hour on the pier. There were hundreds of people out, taking pictures and selfies, trying to capture the unreal sunset that night – all the shades of orange, purple, and blue – the first sunset of the new decade. We went back to the hotel for wine and s’mores and sitting around the firepit. The boys watched Home Alone on the pull-out bed. I brought a special bath bomb for their bath, and with the blessing of blackout curtains, my husband and boys slept in until past 9 a.m. I used the quiet time for something as life-giving for me as sleep: journaling, goal-setting, Bible-reading, and prayer. And when the baby woke up, the two of us headed downstairs to pick up hot chocolate so thick it was almost ganache, with homemade caramel and chocolate chip marshmallows, and nitro cold brew with cream. Breakfast was longanisa sausage and pancakes with butter-crisped edges topped with berries and vanilla butter and macadamia nuts. Then more beach time, us sprawled out on hotel towels, me with a book and the boys with sand toys, all blue skies and soft, sea breeze and grounding sand.

Now that we’re home, our boys say, out of the blue, “Remember the hotel? That was fun.” They say, “Remember the hot chocolate?” or “Remembering when we watched the movie and ate french fries?”

They remember. We remember. We remember what it feels like to celebrate and sleep in and savor all of our favorite foods. We remember how to be present and intentional and unrushed, how fun it is to be a family. We remember how to exercise contentment for where we are at this exact moment in this new year.

Our new year’s retreat was not officially Sabbath, but it captured the ethos of it: “a day to pamper your soul in God’s presence.” (John Mark Comer – Sabbath).

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I set 8 goals this year, and the first one is this: to practice Sabbath, every week for all 52 weeks of this year. 

For the last few weeks, we’ve been calibrating and experimenting with what it looks like for our family to set apart a day that is restful and worshipful, a day that shows gratitude for the week behind and celebration for the week ahead.

The questions that we keep coming back to are: What’s life-giving? What does self-care and soul-care look like in this season? What actually feels restorative? How do we model the rhythms of rest and work to our kids? How do we stay present? How do we follow the lifestyle of Jesus in 2020?

We’re learning new rhythms and building on family traditions. I don’t have all the answers to those questions, but we’re starting with Sabbath.