House of Paula

There have been books about other people’s projects that I have read and R has perused because I have them sitting on the table next to the bed. The titles have included Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters, Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone, and The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size.

His comment to me is always “You could have written this book.” While I appreciate the sentiment, the problem is that I haven’t come up with a good project in the “Self-Help/Self-Esteem/Life Journey” genre. Until now.

A couple weeks ago, LO and I were exchanging e-mails when I casually stated, “I wish I could come up with a cool project like yours.” Little did I know what was going to land in my lap about 10 days later.

Last week, someone brought in a HomeLife Magazine from LifeWay Ministries in at work. In it, there was there was an article about about forgiveness and how you you have to practice forgiveness repeatedly in order to get to the place where you have truly frogiven the person. In it the following scripture from Matthew was quoted (MATT 18:21-22)

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked him, “Lord, how often do I have to forgive a believer who wrongs me? Seven times?”

Jesus answered him, “I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy times seven.”

Between this article and a post on a fitness board by my friend RedLefty about stepping outside his personal comfort zone and stretching his personal boundaries at least once a day, it made me wonder if I could take this principle of practicing forgiveness 490 times and apply it to other areas of my life.

So essentially what I am doing for the next 490 days (well make that 487 days since I’m already 3 days in), is stretching my personal boundaries and making a practice of living my life very intentionally. I’ve got a blog for this little idea of mine in the works, and I’ll post the link by the weekend since I’m still working on the framework.

Does anyone see the irony that I do? I rushed head long into a project about living intentionally.