Resolution

Happy New Year! I resolve to go through my old stuff and organize it and use it and pass it on. This is a picture of my Grandpa George Winkle and Mamie Kier Winkle. I don't know when it was taken or where but I would guess it is in the 50's.

I know I need to figure out how to enlarge these older, smaller pictures to fit my blogs and email.

Last night LuAnn and I made a resolution to make this a better year by doing things better and striving to meet our Christian goals in life.

After this week's bought with the flu and our unintended fasting we thought God was sending us a message. Eat less and strive to be healthier!

That stomach virus could strike anyone but it made us think. I snuck over to Women in Ag, LuAnn's bunch of pals that share the toils of life in agriculture.

She is the most kudo'd poster on AgOnline, and I am not surprised. Her blogs over there probably get a lot more recognition than mine here do and that is OK, that is great!

Here is her list:

1. Eat less; Pray more.

2. Talk less; Listen more.

3. Work less; Play more.

4. Worry less; rejoice more.

5. Complain less; laugh more.

6. Get a mammogram.

7. Remodel my two bathrooms!

The first five in the list looks like a list to live by any good person would try to do in this day and age. But how do you do it?

Eat less and pray more. Pray more is not difficult for me except when I get all wound up in a project. Thanks to my Christian studies I have prayed more in a serious manner in the last two years or so than I have my whole life. It was a natural progression for me.

But eat less? I have always had a voracious appetite but now the years and the pounds have caught up with me. We did take a walk to the covered bridge yesterday in the unusually warm weather and it did not leave me out of breath or weak. It helped me get more things done all afternoon.

Then we had marinated chicken breast, green beans with ham, and a baked potato topped off with pumpkin pie. That is a pretty normal dinner for us. I felt good but could not keep my eyes opened after the evening news. I fell asleep and woke up at 10 and stayed awake for the ball to drop in Times Square. This is going to be a hard one for me.

Talk less, listen more. This can be as hard for me as not eating too much. When I hear more than I know, I am eager to listen. Usually we all hear the same old stuff repeated over and over so I tend to talk more and listen less in these times. Must be the teacher in me when I had to talk for 45 minutes many times a day for 31 years.

Work less, play more. Oh I have mastered that one! Now I need to play less each day and work more to keep myself on the straight and narrow. I can't even run a chainsaw all day anymore and have become the Internet participant and go to town guru! I have to work on that one!

Worry less, rejoice more. I have done really well in this area. I can usually not worry near as much as I used to and I rejoice all day long most days. I would like to keep that one right like I am doing and keep practicing "protect us from all anxiety" that the Lord's Prayer or Our Father commands us to.

Complain less, laugh more. I have strived to do this all my life. I do really well in some moods and poor in others. I am a moody person, I have had to deal with that all my life. I have had to act happy when I wasn't and that comes as a lie to others. For me it is the best thing that person can do if they are really attempting to be the best person they can be.

Mammogram I would equate to the male prostate test. My dad died 10 years ago to prostate cancer but he was the longest living patient at Christ Hospital at that time. Cancer didn't kill him, old age did. I have done well in this arena since I started getting tested when dad found his in 1990. It had been there for quite some time.

The bathrooms, well, they really need remodeling. They are wore out and don't fit the remodeling in the house anymore. Leaks are appearing where they weren't before but it is 40 years old and overtime for an update.

There is my resolution opinion.

What is yours?

Ed Winkle