Dear friends,

June is rapidly coming to an end and if you’ve been using your Kindred Planner, then you’ll know that we’ve reached the end of the month and our Check-In page for June. Woohoo! How have you been at completing these pages? Or are you more prone to skip over them? Or maybe you use them differently, that’s great too!

June’s end of the month’s reflection question is:

“It’s the half year mark. How are you feeling about the goals you’ve set? Take some time to celebrate being halfway there!”

A few of the goals I had started out this year with were: rest, clean eating, physical health, and reading. With the COVID-19 pandemic and being in quarantine, some of these goals have been a lot easier to see progress in than probably would have happened if COVID-19 hadn’t happened.

Rest: With quarantine, I’ve been limited in what I can do outside the home. My social plans, trips, and other activities I use to fill my schedule are non-existent and this has freed up my schedule significantly. Which has meant there has been more time for rest. Not just binge Netflix rest, but proper life-giving, slowing down, rest. I can fully take a Sabbath on Sunday or recently have been taking full weekends off. And it has been glorious.

Reading: I don’t know about you, but my brain just cannot sit on the computer for as long as it has had to. I usually can break up my days with seeing people in person, driving to and from work, and just being out and about our neighborhood. But with moving all work to be on the computer and limiting interactions out and about, most of my time feels focused on a screen and it has taken a physical toll. Reading has helped remove some of that physical strain and it has been a joy to rediscover the joys of reading, to be challenged in what I read, and to expand my repertoire to try new genres, authors, etc.

Physical health and Clean Eating: Both of these started off strong with quarantine, but the longer we sat inside and felt trapped, the easier it became to let things slip by. Reflecting on this past month and looking ahead to the months to come, helps reorient and re-pivot to where I want to be moving forward.

While I’m proud of how I’ve made quantifiable and quality progress on these goals, this past month has brought a lot of hardship and questions that have made me stop, reflect, and do some introspective thinking. Systemic racism, police brutality, white supremacy and the neglect and care towards communities of colors and minorities (specifically the Black community) have always existed in this country from the beginning. The start of this country began with the removal and genocide of the Native American people groups. So what’s happened in the last month is not new. But it has felt to hold more weight, pressure, and attention than it has for a while. And as someone who claims to love people, love people’s stories, and want to be in it with people, I cannot sit idly by and not seek change in my own life.

I in my own person may not be able to overturn systemic racism or end police brutality or white supremacy, but I can work on my own learning, perspectives, postures in life, biases, prejudices, knowledge, etc. And as I work on these areas, then the actions will come. As I begin to unlearn what I have subconsciously internalized, been taught by parents, teachers, etc., and my own biases and prejudices, I get the opportunity to grow and learn in new ways. This growth and learning that will become action is a goal I am committing to. A lifelong goal, because it will take a long time and be a lifelong journey as I continue to unlearn and learn.

This isn’t said with a “look at me and what I’m doing” mentality and posture, but as a commitment I am making to myself. A commitment not to let this current season be a fad moment to jump on, but a commitment to let this season be a launch pad and kick in the butt to shift and move forward in that shift.

So while I’ve taken a good long look and reflected on the goals I’ve made great progress on, there are some more introspective, reflective, life goals that I need to do better on. This half year mark marks the start of moving forward with those.