Happy February! It has been a CRAZY month; I know I normally share my goals at the beginning of the month but some fun things have been happening so I am just now going to share my goals and the progress I’ve made so far in my Powersheets February Tending List. (Don’t know what Powersheets are? Start Here!)

My focus for this year is to worship the Lord in all things. I want to worship the Lord in how I spend my days, in my goals, and through every big and small victory!

One of my biggest goals this month was to celebrate the launch of The PSP Gals, and that’s exactly what God allowed me to do! Here are four highlights from my February so far:

#1: Launching the PSP Gals and enjoying sharing my friendship with these amazing women with you!

#2: posting my 100th blog post and hosting a giveaway! (You can enter until March 1st so make sure to enter here!)

#3: Seeing God’s faithfulness in my Tuesdays with Maura

#4: enjoying the first seed that sprouted for the 2021 garden!

Now onto February’s Tending List! This month my top priority is to celebrate the good! Because I am posting so late, I am going to also share my progress!

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Monthly Goals:

• Date Night: Jared and I also made a goal to “Love One Another Well” and one of the action steps from our mini goal was to get back into a date night routine. Progress: We had a simple date night; we got takeout pizza and watched a movie which during a medication we are trialing – this was perfectly low-key.
• Finance Check In: This is our final joint monthly goal as a couple; as we work to be good stewards over all God has given us, the most important part of that is how we manage our money (especially as a new calendar year on our insurance plan and our deductible is reset.) So we are making time for us to check in with one another every other week on all of our purchases and bills. When we respect one another in all things, we can love one another even better. Progress: we have been beautifully respecting one another by being honest and upfront about our finances, and it has significantly lowered our stress.
• Record 5 Episodes: to say that I am enjoying Season 2 of Chronically Cultivating is an understatement – I am so blessed to be able to share my life with you! Progress: This season is moving steadily, and I even shared my favorite episode thus far (check out Chronically Cultivating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!)
• Write 4 blogs: I have such a good time here with you, and want to be able to publish on a weekly schedule. Progress: I celebrated publishing my 100th blog post (enter the giveaway here!!) but I did fall behind as you can tell with this post.
• Simplify Files: After the tree collapsed into my office this past October, I have been radically decluttering, and want to go through all our files to do the same. Progress: it has not been done yet, and might need to be pushed to next month.
• Celebrate Every Victory: This has been my favorite practice thus far, and I track one victory every day with this quarterly wildcard (you can download this exact one I’m using here!) Progress: I am still tracking everyday and this practice has been life changing!
• Prepare the Garden: I need to get the tulip bulbs planted and schedule the garden bed to be fixed as it had some stability issues. Progress: tulip bulbs are planted and the garden bed repair has been scheduled.
• PSP Night: As always us PSP Gals get together once a month to close out the current month and make our tending lists for the upcoming month! Easily the best part of my month! Progress: We had a great night and are ready for March!
• launch @thepspgals instagram account! Progress: we are live and are having so much fun – check it out here!

Weekly Goals:

• Love Jared Well: spend intentional time together without our phones. Progress: we have been doing a great job to make this a priority
• Sabbath: This is my top priority this month! This is a crossover goal for me, one of the BEST ways we can worship the Lord is by resting. A sabbath day isn’t about rules, it’s about trusting the Lord and leaving the hustle. We can rest because we know that taking a day off to worship Him and give our minds and bodies a break isn’t going to ruin us; the Lord calls us to rest for our benefit and for His witness. Progress: this month hasn’t been the easiest but we are figuring it out.
• Edit Episodes: I am my own editor now, and am learning a new piece to this backend of podcasting. Progress: it’s a learning curve, but I feel like I am learning and improving.
• Mentorship Meetings: Mentoring is really important to me and I have two women who are not only dear friends, but mentors with so much experience in ministry and life. I want to make sure that I stay in touch as they help me process and pray though life and ministry. Progress: it has been going so well and I am so blessed.
• Water the Windowsill Garden: Gotta keep those plants happy and healthy! Progress: I changed this to every 2 weeks after seeing what my plants needed
• Weekly Worship Devotional: Worship is my word of the year, to help me embrace that I am using a special edition of the classic Write the Word Journal: Cultivate Worship from P31 ministries (which has a little under a years worth of weekly devotions on worship.) I will be using this WTW Journal weekly to reflect on how I am worshiping Him well. Progress: I have been keeping it up and really grateful for this practice.

Daily Goals: I use my daily goals more as a habit tracker than a strict goal and it gives me more freedom in seasons of uncertainty.

• No Spend: I want to be more responsible and not make rash purchases so this will help hold me accountable to our financial goals. Progress: it has not been perfect – and I didn’t expect it to be – but this has significantly helped me get into a routine of not making “rash” purchases.
• Stay Connected: I have many intentional social media boundaries in place, but want to also be intentional about spending time connecting with you! Progress: I know I keep saying I am blessed, but I am SO grateful for y’all and enjoy getting to know each of you!
• Mood: This is so fun – we, The PSP Gals, are doing a fun experiment to track how similar our moods are! We are doing this by coloring in a box with 7 predetermined colors for different moods and then we will compare them at the end of the month! Progress: This has been an enlightening experiment for me as I am learning that just because I had a bad medical day doesn’t mean that I am having a bad “mood” day.
• Downtime: I’ve gotten lazy about utilizing the “downtime” option on my phone so I am going back to limiting my ability to get onto all forms of social media or other unproductive, time-sucking apps with Fridays and Saturdays off. To keep me accountable, I put the parental controls on it and had Jared put in the screen time passcode so if I want to extend my time I need to ask. This worked well for me in the past, and hope to see good things come from it moving forward. (I should note that Jared will also extend it whenever I ask, I am in full control, but he is also good about asking me if I “really want him to do that” and more often than not I say no and let the temptation go.) Progress: by changing it up from last month, I have been so much more consistent in following the downtime routine.
• Water House Plants: I am continuing to water the pilea plant everyday and it has resurrected that plant and is now thriving! But funny story – I thought this would be helpful to water my other house plants every 2 days, and I almost killed many of them, thankfully I noticed quickly. My plants got used to the relaxed routine I had, and even though I was watering them as often as it’s recommended they didn’t handle the water intake. Some progress is that I am letting them be lol
• Little by Little: Rather than using a monthly wildcard page to highlight how God is moving in my life, I am using the Little by Little Journal (currently sold out) to do that. Progress: this has been a wonderful practice.
• In the Word: I aim to be in the Word in some form everyday and am tracking it here! Progress: I have been much more consistent now that I am making this my number one priority.

So that’s been my February!

In case you didn’t know, here on Living the Chronic Illness Life you now have access to the Grace + Goals Resource Library which helps you tailor your goal setting and powersheets to seasons of uncertainty. You can find all the info here!

Don’t have a set of Powersheets yet? Don’t worry you can get a 6 month set now!

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Cassie Nolin is a married spoonie who lives the chronic illness life with EDS + Co. (Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and it’s comorbid conditions.) She challenges others to choose grace over guilt while goal setting, and is in ministry part time serving the online community through Grace + Goals and The Spoonie Study. She loves planting, hand lettering, and sharing the hope she has found in Jesus. Her blog, Living the Chronic Illness Life, is in the top 100 chronic illness blogs and in 2019 she launched her podcast, Chronically Cultivating, where Cassie encourages women to live authentic and intentional lives through their diagnosis’ not in spite of them. You can learn more about her at www.livingthechronicillnesslife.com

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