Managers Meeting

This past weekend Kurt and I had the wonderful privilege of spending Saturday afternoon and evening alone - just the two of us. Wow! Imagine that! Kurt's parents agreed to take our three munchkins from 11 a.m. until bed time. We were so thankful. :)

We had previously planned to have a church lunch meeting that day, so kicked off our kid-free time with that. It was great to be around fellow friends (adults!) and have adult conversations without worrying about getting the kids settled with their plates, trying to keep their voices at a low level, etc. It was SO nice. :)

After our meeting we headed up to Lincoln. We already knew what we were going to do... and it wasn't Christmas shopping. (Although, I have to be honest. Being in the "big city" and not getting any errands or shopping done felt very strange! Believe me, in the back of my head I was thinking, "Oh, we could have stopped there!" or "We could have gotten that there..." But I already knew that was not the purpose of this trip, so tried to keep those thoughts at bay.) What we actually did was head to a local coffee shop of all places. Kurt brought his leather notebook folder and a notebook, and we had ourselves .... a Managers Meeting.

Backing up a bit, Kurt does quite a bit of personal reading to help him grow and become a better manager at work. (And I do have to brag that he does an awesome job at it!) Well, he had been reading these books and thought, "These are great principles! And they don't necessarily have to be applied only at your work place - these can be applied at home, too!"

Then last week some time, I off-handedly remarked about wanting to eat better and start exercising more, and how it was such a personal struggle and that I really needed to have some accountability in order for it to work. Well, my comment, combined with the information in his books, is what sparked our meeting (MM, from this point out). So the date was set. We knew we had this lunch thing going on, but figured we should still have enough time for our MM afterward.

Now back to the coffee shop. Being in a setting like that was much more, um, stimulating? than just sitting at home talking to each other on the couch. The atmosphere provided a more serious, in-depth, sharing kind of setting. I'm not sure why. But it just did. (Those of you "coffee shop" visitors probably know what I'm talking about. :) So we got our drinks - he got some kind of fancifully named coffee and I got a caramel apple cider (beings that I'm not at all a coffee drinker) - then we jumped into our MM.

Kurt had already written up much of his own stuff earlier in the week, which was fine. Then he had the time to talk me through writing up mine. (And had more time to share some things that were on his heart, too.) We wrote out 6 month, 2 year and 10 year goals for each "role" in our life. (i.e., Physical, Spiritual, Professional, Wife/Mother, etc.) Now, we had written out general goals together before, but it had been quite awhile since we'd done that and it had not been at all this focused or in-depth. And here's the kicker with our current goals ... we are going to have a MM (here at home) each Sunday night to review our week, see how each other is doing with their goals, encourage each other (there will be a lot of grace involved, I'm sure!), as well as look over our upcoming week and make plans. Wowzers. Talk about an undertaking! And while I look at my goal sheet and feel absolutely overwhelmed, I realize this is a work in progress and I'm taking this one step at a time. And as we progress through this and see something that needs to be changed, we can change it. Just the fact that we've giving it a go is so exciting.

I realize now as we're kicking this thing off, our biggest challenge, initially, is to keep our Sunday evening MM on the calendar. That's our first and biggest goal. That weekly meeting. But I am SO thrilled that we're doing this. It's something we've been needing to do for quite some time now. And just for myself, personally, it's very exciting to be working on goals - many of which I've thought about for quite some time or have failed to keep in the past - and to know I have a partner holding me accountable to those. Prayerfully, this time these goals can be met. :)

Woohoo!!! Here's to weekly Managers Meetings!! :)