“If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.” –Zig Ziglar

It’s a little scary to put “out there” (what if I fail?), but I have some very specific goals for 2016. And it’s nothing short of amazing to me how focusing on my goals is changing the way I think. One of my goals is to be out of debt by the end of the year (I don’t believe in buying on credit anymore – my debt consists only of medical bills, but the pile of bills has grown by 1/3 because I was in the hospital over the summer). Since I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, decided to call on the principles I learned in Financial Peace University last spring, and got really, really serious about getting out of debt my thinking has really started changing.

For example, I was steaming veggies on the stove a couple of days ago and I got distracted so burned an expensive saucepan, ruining it pretty thoroughly…or so I thought. But instead of throwing it out and using it as an excuse to go shopping for a new pan (which is probably what I would have done even as recently as several months ago), I spent 20 minutes applying an SOS pad, some Bartender’s Friend (it’s like Ajax or Comet, but for cookware/kitchen surfaces), and some serious elbow grease to the thing and now it’s almost as good as new.

Between my newfound, fierce determination to reach my goals and reading a chapter of the New Testament every day (which is actually another of my goals – I want to read the entire New Testament this year), my mind is being renewed.

“There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens…” —Ecclesiastes 3:3 (Yes, I know this is from the Old Testament, but it fits.) “…There is a time to shop, and a time to work with what you have.” (I totally made this part up, by the way; still…I like it.)

Technically speaking this is my year of surrender (my word for the year), but I think that privately I will wind up referring to it as my “Year of Living Frugally.”