Setting Goals

Early on in our relationship, my now-husband-then-boyfriend and I were low-key excited to realize we shared an interest in Dave Ramsey. If you don’t know who that is, Dave Ramsey is a finance guru who has built a reputation by helping people get out of debt and live a life of financial freedom. He’s definitely not for everyone (although I’m sure he’d say otherwise), he’s not the kind of guy who pulls punches (listen to his radio program and podcasts as evidence).

This shared interest got my husband and I into some very interesting conversations and definitely helped me to ramp up my financial literacy. We shared goals in life that Ramsey’s curriculum would help us get to, like staying out of debt, paying off our student loans as quickly as possible, being generous, and teaching our kids about money and how to use it well. These goals have helped guide our financial decisions, which has included refusing to go into debt to buy a car and having a grounded monthly budget. 

Having financial goals has been enormously helpful in structuring our lives. Similarly, I’ve also found that goal setting has been incredibly helpful in this health-ministry enterprise. Recently, I listened to a podcast by a woman named Holly Haynes entitled “Crush the Rush.” Haynes’ mission is to help women grow in their entrepreneurial ventures. In one episode, she sets up guidelines to help listeners set goals, both big picture and day-to-day. As I listened, I opened up a Google Doc and started setting some goals. In doing so, I’ve discovered a few things that I hope will help anyone reading this to set their own life, health, and God-centered goals in order to live a life of shalom. 

1. What are your priorities? Your core values?

My top and most consistent would be God/faith, family, and wellness (the last one keeps going on the back burner but I’m working on it!). These values trickled down as I thought through what my objectives were in building what I wanted to do in health-ministry and how I measured success. For example, one of the goals I set for the month of October was that I would spend 10 minutes a day reading the Bible (trying to set small, attainable goals). I have a tracker in my bullet journal where I can cross off how many chapters I’ve read, which helps satisfy my love of crossing off tasks. But outside of scratching an itch, it also helps me to remain grounded. I want God to be the leader in this venture. In order to stay connected to where he wants me to be, I need to be spending time with him. Although it’s just 10 minutes, I’ve found that those 10 minutes have helped to inform how I interact with people, how I set future objectives, and how I interact with my family, which is also one of my priorities. 

What do you value? How can these values guide your day to day actions? Another example might be that my family is a big value for me. So when I make the goal of “workout 3 times a week for at least 15 minutes,” the motivating value is “I want to have more energy and physical capacity to play and spend time with my kids and my husband.” Short term goals are great, but knowing the “why” helps to keep things going.

1. Find accountability – share your core values, goals, and objectives with someone

After making this “goals” document, I decided to share it with my husband. I may also share it with one other person, depending on their own time and energy. 

At first I thought of this as just having someone to guilt me into doing something I had set out to do, but I also realized I’m hungry for more than that. I want someone to engage with me in my ideas, someone who will be interested, ask me questions, challenge me, and find ways to help me do things better. I’m so glad for my husband, who loves working with systems and making them more efficient or effective. He’s the kind of person who challenges the status quo, and isn’t afraid to make you uncomfortable if it helps you to get to a better place. 

I’m also constantly looking for people who might share my interests, either because they’re doing it or because they’re also looking to do it. Although I have a few people I continue to reach out to, it’s been difficult finding that consistent “someone.” But I’m so grateful for those few people, mostly because they bring ideas and perspectives I otherwise would not have experienced or known without their insight. 

I would also challenge you to be that person for someone else. Joseph (my husband) and I have recently started to lead premarital counseling sessions together. Our church has a very good curriculum that they’ve been using, and it’s been a fun experience. It’s been exciting for us to see how helpful these conversations can be in the lives of the people God has put us together with, and it has also been a good reminder for us to challenge ourselves to be better. If you’re looking to grow in a certain area of life, there’s no better way to do it than to engage with people who are going through it themselves. It can be as a mentor or as a colleague, but make sure to be actively giving back. You might be surprised by what you learn along the way. 

3. Read and engage in relevant content, and join communities of people who are doing what you’re interested in. 

I’ve been listening to podcasts, reading books, finding communities, and constantly researching how people have pulled together health and ministry. I’ve also just been looking for books and works by people who talk about trying and doing new things. Even if not all of the content is 100% relevant, they have been inspirational and motivating in their own ways. Here’s a list of just a few of the things I’ve done over the last few months to garner some inspiration:

-Joined Nurses Christian Fellowship (NCF) and, in turn, Collaboration of Licenced Nurses (CLN), the Chicago chapter of NCF. I’ve attended a few of their zoom sessions and it’s been encouraging to hear from this small group of experienced nurses on how they have integrated faith into their practice. 

-Show Your Work by Justin Kleon – This is one of the reasons I continue to write. It might not be a very profitable way for me to go about this, but putting my experience out there helps me to process it as well as find and (hopefully) be found by others who might share the same interests. 

-Podcasts: 

Crush the Rush, by Holly Haynes – an entrepreneur mom who helps other entrepreneur moms

Real Happy Moms, by Toni-Ann Mayembe – a mom who helps moms get through life

I’ve also just been reading and reading. I can never seem to finish anything, and there are probably several unfinished books in my Kindle just waiting for me to pick them back up again. But these books have continued to inspire me, and my Amazon wish list of books to read keeps getting longer and longer. 

Lastly, I’ve looked for events, food pantries, churches, seminars, any and all opportunities I could possibly find and make time for in order to figure out what are the health needs of the community, not just at my own work. 

Honestly, there have been LOTS of dead ends. For example, I recently found a program that marries Faith, Health, and Theology at a local university and got super excited, but felt deflated after finding out that the program is no longer running. Dead-ends give me pause, and it’s easy for me to get to a place that makes me question whether or not the time and energy I’m putting in are worth it. Is this actually what I’m supposed to be doing? What if all of this is just going to end up being a colossal waste of my time? What if all the pain, blood-sweat-tears, heartache, and longing all end up being for naught? 

I’ve been researching quite a bit as I prepare to teach one of the nights at our church’s grief workshop. It’s been incredibly humbling as I’ve listened to the teachers for other nights, and honestly, I don’t feel like I have any business being there, but I’m praying for God to be present, more so than my own possible failures. In mulling over the difficulty of ministering to people who are in the midst of a lot of pain and suffering, I’ve read through the book of Job, and I’m reading through Tim Keller’s work on Walking with God through Pain and Suffering. As I contemplate these works, as well as the experiences I’ve had in oncology and through my own life, I’ve realized I’ve been very occupied with being in control, with feeling settled and wanting there to be minimal chaos around me. 

As I listen to the stories at this grief workshop and meditate on Job and Keller’s book, I have become much more aware that I am much less in control than I think I am. I do feel as though God is gently nudging me in this direction of health ministry, but even if he is, it does not mean the outcome will be what I hope for or expect. And if not, will God be any less real? Will he be less himself? Less in control? Less able to use this story for his purposes, even if I may never see it? 

So in setting goals, I keep in mind that the thing I can control is not the actual outcome. I can envision, plan, and hope for it. But ultimately, the only thing I am in control of is how I respond, not what happens. My prayer is that my responses will be ones that align with who God has made me and where he calls me to go, and my hope will be that that will bring me somewhere in harmony with my own desires, ones that I believe God has made in me. But if they do not, I will also hope that God remains beautiful to me, and that he continues to be the “main thing” in all future endeavors.