Can you believe we are already a month into the new year?

Speaking of the new year, do you use a planner to keep track of your schedule and goals? 

After Christmas, I usually head to the store to find a new planner every year. There’s something compelling about getting a new planner. To me, its crisp, unmarked pages represent new possibilities. 

Once I’ve chosen one, I eagerly bring my shiny new planner home and jot down my schedule and daily, weekly, and monthly goals. Each entry is a declaration that this year will be different; this year, I will stay on track and hit every goal I set.

For a while, I do Okay with my goals. But then, after some time passes, I’ll pick up my planner, flip through the pages, and discover a scary truth: I am not meeting the goals I set for myself! 

These missed deadlines glare up at me from the pages of my planner and scream, “You’re failing.” The weight of this leaves me weary, frustrated, and ready to quit because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to get it together.

Have you ever felt like that? Like everything you are trying to do just isn’t working?

You could be worried you won’t complete the project you are working on in time or struggling to make any progress on the personal goals you’ve set for yourself. Or maybe, the very thought of setting goals overwhelms you because you fear you will never be able to attain them. 

Wherever you find yourself on the goal-setting scale, there is hope. With God’s help, we can keep going even though things don’t seem to be working the way we expected. We can count on God to help us every step of the way to reach our goals. We only have to seek, trust, and faithfully hold on to him every day, especially when we want to give up. 

In my latest guest post at A Wife Like Me, I share how we can persevere and overcome goal overwhelm with God! I invite you to read Six Things To Pray For When Goals Overwhelm Us.