Home is where you go to fulfill your "bucket list".......

Each January 1st for 25 years, our family has filled out our "wish list"...later called our "goal list" and more recently called our "Bucket List".

The whole point of the "list" whatever it is called is to set goals for the year.

I have kept every single list for each one of us....

I cherish these lists...at four, the kids put things like...

I wish...

   for a dog, to become President of the US, to have my ears pierced, a pet turtle, to go to Washington DC

Later, the lists grew into things like this..

I wish...

    to make straight A's, to make the volleyball team, to make the baseball team, to go to Hong Kong, to go on a church mission trip…

And, more recently, their lists have included...

   to be baptized (all three have been), for Papaw to be baptized, to take a family vacation,  to go to Harry Potter World, to go on a cruise, for peace…for joy and laughter…

We have written out our lists for every year these past 25 except for last year (2010)….and, I confess, that year was a tough one.  I’ll always wonder about what if….But, we are back on track with 2011…and, while our “bucket list” write a little differently this year, re-kindling the “Bucket List”  has revived our spirit of fun and adventure…it has re-set the clock for our belief that “through God all things are possible”…..it has re-ignited our passion for pursuing things which matter in life to our family…different as we are now.

This year’s list included things like…

     Have a home we can be proud of and invite our friends over all the time, be the “go to” home for our friends, take a trip to the ocean, play more family games together, have a pool, sit in a new place at church,  work at the Hope Center every other month rather than every month, live in truth, be healthier, eat better, invite over to our home kids who would not otherwise be invited over, do some daring things such as jump the “Pit”, read our Bibles through in a year, eat breakfast for dinner on Sunday nights, get our driver’s license, go see our grandparents more, have our grandparents come see us more, have my brothers and I be closer and talk more, pray my daughter move back home and return to college, give back to others more than we take from them, be good listeners, have more compassion to the less fortunate, be real with our friends…don’t sit on the sidelines watching them struggle, go to them and be there for them…BE REAL like the Velveteen Rabbit..

I find it interesting as I wrote our Bucket List items above, just how many we have already accomplished…some purposefully, and some by God’s divine provision.

I have always loved our annual rite of preparing the “list”, whatever we call it because it is a written reminder of a purposeful heart. 

I like it even more so when my children have a purposeful heart…I think God does as well.


If a Bucket List assists us in having a purposeful heart for the future as it has in the past, we will once again be Bucket List writers….

So, as I head down to the beach, where the ocean waves are bringing in the new morning’s sunrise, I smile……joy comes in the morning, just as He promises. 

I claim that joy.

I claim it in my heart…I claim it in my soul…

And, I claim it in writing…from HIS writing to my family’s Bucket List.

Blessings,

Lesa