Neglecting Your Faith Life? - I Was

This fall while I was in Quebec, I visited the Shrine to Saint Anne de Beaupre. What a beautiful, prayerful place. On the hillside next to the massive church building, there were statues of the Stations of the Cross. Unfortunately, they were in a serious state of disrepair. The paint was peeling and the wooden posts were rotting. The statues themselves were covered in cobwebs and mold. It was obvious that it had been some time since the people, who built these statues as a sign of their love and affection, had been around to care for them.

As I walked through the woods, I asked myself, "Doesn't anyone love these statues and Jesus himself enough to take the time to clear off the cobwebs and repair the damage caused by neglect?  At that same moment, another thought hit me like a wave so hard it actually took my breath away.  A voice inside my head said, "Don't you love me enough to spend time in prayer with me every day?" At that moment, I knew that even with all the free time I had since I semi-retired, I was not being faithful in my prayer time. I wasn't spending time to build my faith.

I wasn't being truly grateful for all the many gifts I had been given. Sure, I said thank you to God when I felt that He had helped me in a difficult situation.  It wasn't that I had stopped believing in Him. It was that I was taking my faith for granted.  Like any relationship, in order to truly know someone, you need to spend time with them. At that moment, I resolved to spend more time in prayer.  When I went back into the shrine to pray, I found this little card on a table.  It seemed that Jesus was reminding me that prayer is not something I "do" it is a state of "being" with Him.

So, if you think you might have been neglecting your faith life, I encourage you to find that quiet place and spend some time "being" with God.  With Thanksgiving Day just around the corner, take time to remember all God's blessings and truly thank Him.

As the Oola guys have been trying to teach me, in order to have a truly balanced, wonderful life, you have to make sure the other things in your life don't take away the time you should spend on your faith. 

If you want to know more about the Oola guys and their book on finding balance in your life, stop by their website and blog.

Here is a link to just one of their posts on finding gratitude in both the good times and the bad.

What do you do to maintain your faith life?  How do you make the time for prayer?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.  Thanks for sharing.

Oola Life: I am Financially Free!

When I was much younger than I am now, my father told me that if you want to feel richer you need to spend less than you make. It took me a few years to apply this wisdom to my life, but when I did I discovered a freedom from fear that only comes when you are DEBT FREE! You can experience this joy too. Start today by honestly looking at the "luxury extras" in your life.  For me, that might be regularly staying in resort RV parks that cost $50-$100 a night instead of staying at state or federal parks for $15-$20 night. Now, there's nothing wrong with staying at the resort RV park if you make enough money to pay cash for it. When it becomes a "wrong choice" for me is when I need to charge my RV campsite to my credit card because I really can't afford to pay cash.

Over the years I saved thousands of dollars by eliminating just a few luxuries. Each may seem small and insignificant but together they add up. For example, I no longer get a daily fancy coffee out at a restaurant (You know the place, it starts with an S). If you multiply that daily $5 fancy coffee by 300 days, you will see that this saved me $1,500. So is this small deprivation worth it? For me, the answer is yes! That and many other small choices over the years helped me to save money so I could retire early. It let me pay cash for my RV so I could travel around the United States full time without any debt. It is allowing me now to live at home to provide full-time caregiving to my parents without worrying about money.

My next step in maintaining this sense of financial freedom is to learn how to manage my money better so it goes further. In their book, Oola: Find Balance in an Unbalanced World, Dave, and Troy (the Oola Guys) challenge us to learn all we can about managing money and to apply what we learn to our lives. By knowing more we can make better choices about how we invest, donate, and use our money to make the world a better place for ourselves, those we love and our communities. As I help my aging parents, I can see how important it is that we all know and understand the economy and governments of the places where we live so we can best utilize the financial resources we've worked so hard to earn and save. In the future, if you see me diffusing my Young Living oils in my RV while pouring over financial websites and reading books on how to manage money, you'll know I'm working hard to grow in the financial area of my Oola life.

So, now I challenge you to consider what you can do to bring more financial balance to your life. Do you feel free from debt or are you anxious when the bills come?  Are you using your money in the best ways to serve your needs and the needs of others or is fear holding you back?  If you could change one thing in the way you manage your money, what would it be?

A Life That's Balanced Is An Oola Life

I don't know about you, but it seems that throughout my whole life I've struggled to keep my life in balance. Here are just a few examples of the times when I knew my life was out of balance. When I was working too much, I worried that my relationships with family and friends were suffering. Now that I quit my full-time job so I can be more available to help my family, I know that my field (job/work) and my finances aren't growing as much as I want. When the first thing I grab in the morning is my mobile phone so I can play one of my silly games, I know my faith life suffers. When I sit around and watch a lot of television or play computer games, my overall fitness suffers. Now, there are many more examples I could share but I think you get the idea. My life is not currently balanced. The chart I posted here shows the areas in my life that need time and attention so they can grow.

It's time to reassess how I spend my time, talent and treasures. I guess that is why I started to read the book, Oola: Finding Balance in an Unbalanced World.  My hope that is over the next month I will get motivated to commit the time and effort it takes to live a more balanced life and to grow in all seven areas. I also hope that this blog post might motivate you, too. So, is your life balanced and growing in all seven areas? The Oola guys can help you figure that out. Take the Oola balance quiz to see which areas of your life could use a little more time and attention. Here is the link to their free quiz - OOLA BALANCE QUIZ.  In the book, the authors show a score of around 700 to be the goal of being more balanced and feeling the "oo la la" in your life.  #oolalife

What is Oola?

So, what exactly is Oola?  Oola is a term created to describe that feeling you have when all seven areas of your life are "in the zone"  What are the seven areas in our lives? They are faith, family, friends, fun, fitness, finance, and field (work). Oola is experienced when all seven areas are balanced and growing. In the first chapter of the book "Living Balanced in an Unbalanced World," the authors use the analogy of the circus artist who is spinning plates on poles. By the time he or she gets to the last pole the first plate starts to wobble and they need to give that plate their time and attention. They keep running back and forth between all the plates until at one point all the plates are balanced on their poles at the same time.

The first chapter also showed me that being balanced doesn't mean that each area gets exactly the same amount of hours in each day, but instead each area gets the time it needs to continue to grow. The balanced aspect is about making sure that the time spent in one area growing isn't at the expense of another area. I am hopeful this book will help me to figure out how to do this better.  I am also signing up for the Oola Challenge for Women. A 21-day email letter that will challenge me to apply what I am learning. So, my blog posts each day may be a mix of what I am learning from both of these. Well, thanks for listening to me ramble on about this first chapter. Let me know if you have any questions about this and I will do my best to try and answer them.

Be Grateful for the Life You Have

Sorry I haven't posted for the past few months. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have stopped living and traveling in my RV so I can help my parents as they age gracefully. During this time, I have missed my RV life, but I am also so grateful for the time I am spending with my parents. We play games together and they share stories with me. Recently I ran across this quote from the Oola Life website. It reminded me that we can be both grateful for the life we have now while planning and dreaming of the life we want.

To be honest, I really want to continue living and traveling full-time in my RV and I know that someday in the future that will be a reality. At the same time, I am truly grateful for the ability to serve two people I love. Is it always easy?  Nope! Having been single and living alone for such a long time, I need to learn to compromise and to adjust my life to the needs and wants of others. During this time, I also need to learn to keep my life balanced.  Over the next 27 days, I will be reading "Oola: Finding Balance in an Unbalanced World" by Dave Braun and Troy Amdahl.  I will try and post my thoughts about each chapter in this blog so you can follow along with me on this journey. It won't be as much fun as following me on my RV travels, but maybe it will be enlightening.

Thanks friends for your support and prayers. I hope that one day in the future I will be driving through your neighborhood in my RV. Till then, I will be grateful for the life I have today!

Looking for Balance in Your Life?

Are you trying to find balance in your life? Thinking that if things were different, it would be easier? I used to think that too. When I retired and started living fulltime in an RV I thought it would solve all my problems. I would lose 60 pounds, visit with my family who live all over the United States, reconnect with friends, have time for more fun, ramp up my prayer life, find a cool part-time job and have enough money to do everything without ever having to go back to work in an office.  WELL . . . things haven't turned out quite the way I imagined. What I've learned is that sometimes "the road is uneven and bumpy". Now don't get me wrong, I've had an amazing three months, as you can see from my blog and Instagram posts. But, I've also had a terrible cold, been lost in the mountains with almost no gas, and haven't really gotten my new job off and running yet.


It's amazing what you can learn about yourself by just answering a few questions. So, at the end of this first quarter, I am taking the time to assess my life. The tool I am using is found on a website called "Oola Life". I heard the authors, Dave and Troy, speak at a conference in September and have been trying to improve in the seven areas of my life ever since. These areas are faith, family, friends, fun, fitness, finance and field (work). As I sit here and write this blog post I must confess I've had my ups and downs. Most likely this is due to the fact that I haven't actually written down goals or figured out how to measure my progress toward growth in all 7 areas. (I know all my former colleagues are gasping as I was the queen of the measurement tool). So, you guessed it, I've decided to take this month to find my baseline measures in each area and actually write my goals down for myself.  In the next few weeks, I will share my goals and then you can keep me accountable.  If you are also looking to set some "New Year's Resolutions" and need a tool to help you identify where you have some room to grow, I'd like to recommend that you take the free online quiz at https://www.oolalife.com/step1


(Sorry if this page is weird looking when you try and read it. I've been having some computer issues with Blogger and was waiting to post till I worked it out. Obviously, I haven't worked them out but I wanted to keep you updated on the ongoing Camino Turtle adventures.)