Every so often I get inspired to rebuild or rework to start again fresh on a project. With the start of 2014 there are so many firsts about to happen, such as owning a home and having a baby that it felt like the right time to overhaul JustinHough.com into a completely new design. While I’m still working out the bugs with the new design there are a lot of areas that need to bring a fresh perspective to that haven’t been touched since 2011. A few years ago my writing schedule afforded me the time to write each and every day though lately it is certainly harder to get enough time to stitch a few sentences together, which is why my posts tend to have a few weeks, if not months in-between them.

Fresh Starts

Website redesigns and reimagined writing schedules aren’t the only fresh starts that our happening this year. My wife and I are eagerly waiting the birth of our first child and to be honest I can’t stand waiting any longer. Though while I sit waiting I realize that I will need to be more intentional with my time and activities. At my job I’ve always tried to better my skills by being more efficient with the time I spend on projects. I’ve spent plenty of time in planning meetings, preparing timelines and schedules for work, making task lists, and other ways to stay productive and accountable. Now why can’t those same principles that I’ve been applying at my job not be applied at home when being around my family. Though some might think that planning in such a way would make my actions cold and calculating rather than loving and caring. There might be instances of where that statement would be true, but I think of planning more in a sense of preparing my day as to not let it get away from me. In my youth I’ve let so much of my time slip away because I meandered through everything around me rather than being intentional and focused on a particular outcome. When I think about being intentional I’m drawn back to the Bible and a few verses in Proverbs 6 that take about preparing.

Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man. A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech Proverbs 6:6-12 (ESV)

With the impending birth of our first child, my wife and I realized that we need to be more intentional with our time. We need to spend more time with each other caring and nurturing our relationship, as well as, caring for our new little girl. We can’t let our lives be taken out of control by the circumstances that we find ourselves surrounded with and in this case we cannot careless to forget about one relationship because a new one has started.

When we got married our lives changed dramatically from being independent to being one flesh and to be honest it was hard, but together we started to see that we needed to care and spend more time thinking about the other person. Not sure we entirely nailed that in the last three years, but I know that the test will come when our little girl is born and our time becomes stretched a little thinner. As I sit waiting I can’t help but wonder where our lives will be in a year or two after our daughter is born and how much stronger we will be as a result of the time we intentionally spend together.