Silent Saturday: Counting the Cost

April 8, 2023 Cathleen Zahradnik

It is Saturday of Holy Week. Good Friday has passed. Easter Sunday is yet to come. We wait in anticipation of that joyous celebration. But what did the disciples do on that Saturday after the crucifixion? They did not know that joy awaited them. They observed the Sabbath in obedience, but that day of rest from work was most likely anything but a day of rest in the mind. How could they do anything but continue to relive Friday’s horror and wonder how they would ever face, not only Sunday, but every day after?

It is in human nature to avoid the painful, but what if you and I took this Saturday to relive some of Good Friday’s pain? Might it increase our joy of the resurrection?

Celebration is Motivation!

April 1, 2023 Cathleen Zahradnik

You’ve taken the time to craft a compelling goal. You’ve created a system to remember your goals. You’ve thought about what you want to achieve. You’ve asked yourself some hard questions. Good work!

Now begins the task of working toward achieving that goal. Where are you at? It’s time to evaluate. Do you know what that means? More hard questions!

To evaluate where you are, take a good hard look at the reality that is right now. Why not start with an encouragement boost? Consider your goal, and ask yourself some questions.

What is working well? Start here.

Review Regularly. Remember. Achieve.

March 25, 2023 Cathleen Zahradnik

Remember that goal you set in January? You took the time to think it through. You crafted a compelling goal. You thought through your why. You took the time. You made the effort. Take a moment now and repeat back to yourself what you planned to accomplish. What’s that? You kind of remember? Is “kind of” remembering really remembering?

You and I have full lives. There are so many things happening every day, right? The kids have to go there. This bill needs to be paid. That customer needs this right away! The refrigerator is empty. And on and on and on. There are so many things that we absolutely need to do. It’s very easy for what we really want to do to get lost at the bottom of the pile. Unless….unless we make a plan to keep that goal at the top of the pile.

Here’s the bottom line, my friend: You will not do what you do not remember. The only way to set yourself up to actually achieve your goal is to regularly review it.

How does regularly reviewing your goals help you achieve your purpose? When you prayerfully and thoughtfully craft specific goals, these goals line up with your life purpose. You have made goals to help you achieve the purpose you were created for. When you set yourself up to accomplish those goals by regularly reviewing them, you set yourself up to achieve your purpose.

So, here are some tips to help you do just that.

Be intentional. It doesn’t matter how good your memory is, if you don’t decide to create a system to regularly remind yourself of your goals they will get lost in the list of to-dos.

How to Craft a Compelling Goal

March 18, 2023 Cathleen Zahradnik

Compelling: evoking interest, attention, or admiration in a powerfully irresistible way:

Is your most cherished goal a compelling one? A compelling goal is one that keeps you moving forward. It is clear, concise, and connected to a strong why, a why that is rooted in your reason to be. A non-specific goal that isn’t connected to your reason to be is not going to motivate your forward motion. The most important aspect of crafting a goal is knowing why you want to complete it. A goal that isn’t connected with your why is not a goal that will be accomplished. Craft goals that connect with your why!

What motivates you most? When you set goals do you think of what you want to accomplish or why you want to accomplish it? Both aspects are important if you really want to achieve something. If you set your goal, what you want to do, without considering why you want to do it, you won’t get far.

The secret to setting a truly compelling goal is knowing why you want to reach it in the first place. Your why keeps you reaching when you get weary or feel lost. How do you craft a compelling goal?

Clear Goals, Clearer Purpose

March 11, 2023 Cathleen Zahradnik

Movies. They entertain and inspire, right? Tom and I enjoy watching movies to relax. We like Hallmark movies because they are predictable. I am not ashamed! You always know there will be a happy ending and that there will be no jarring surprises in the process of getting there. We enjoy classic adventures like Star Wars, but we also enjoy inspiring true-life stories. One of our favorites is Chariots of Fire.

Chariots of Fire is set against the backdrop of the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. It follows the development of Great Britain’s running team and focuses the story on two young men in particular, Harold Abrams, a Cambridge student who became a journalist, and Eric Lidell, a Scottish preacher who became a missionary to China. They are both runners and contenders for the gold medal in their event. Spoiler Alert: They both achieve gold medals, but their motivations for getting there and their responses to their challenges along the way differ. However, there is a similarity I want to emphasize for your benefit: They kept their goal in focus. They both had a clear vision of what they wanted to accomplish and devoted tremendous efforts to reaching that end.

Harold Abrams and Eric Liddell kept their goal in focus. That enabled them to go further, achieve more, and developed their character. What about you? How clear are your goals? Do they help you go further, achieve more and develop your character?

A clear goal helps you to focus your energy.

What is Your Goal?

March 4, 2023 Cathleen Zahradnik

Are your New Year’s resolutions already forgotten? Tell those failure thoughts to be quiet! It’s not too late to regroup and reset. But a resolution won’t help you get where you want to go. What you need is an actual goal. Do you have a goal?

What’s the difference between a resolution and a goal? A resolution is a decision, a desired outcome, but it isn’t a real target. A goal is a specific target to aim at. I’ve heard it said that a goal without a target date is a dream. It won’t happen. So, setting goals is different than making a resolution. A resolution declares, “This is what I want.” A goal says, “This is what I am going to do and this is when I am going to do it.” It requires prayerful consideration and intentionality.

What are some things you want to accomplish before this year is over? Why not set some goals? Think about what completing those goals will do for you —for your character, for your growth as a person.

So, my friend, what kind of goals do you want to set? Here are some things you need to know about goals to get you started.

Obstacle or Opportunity?

February 25, 2023 Cathleen Zahradnik

Are you a Sound of Music fan? While our kids were growing up, we had a double-video-cassette version of it and they loved it. When they were toddlers, they asked to watch “Doh-doh” (because of the song that goes “Doh, a dear…🎵”) It was very cute! If you aren’t familiar with the story, young nun-to-be, Maria, struggles to fit in with life at the abbey and Mother Abbess decides she needs a change of pace to determine if being a nun is truly Maria’s calling. So, she sends Maria to serve as governess to a widowed captain’s seven children. The rest, as they say, is history as Maria and Captain Von Trapp fall in love and she discovers that God’s will for her is to be a wife and mother, not a nun.

Maria faces many obstacles along her journey of discovery, but her primary goal is “to find out what is the will of God and do it whole-heartedly.” That’s a worthy goal for anyone!

One famous song from the musical is Climb Every Mountain. I remember singing it with my high school choir in my freshman year back in 19… never mind! In the context of the story Mother Abbess sings it to Maria to encourage her to persevere through the challenges she was facing with the Von Trapps and “find your dream.” This inspires Maria to continue on her discovery journey and not long after she finds herself married to Captain Von Trapp.

So, what does all this have to do with you? Like Maria, you are facing obstacles and challenges that seem to hold you back from finding your dream and fulfilling your destiny. There are struggles that may indicate where you are right now is not where you were meant to be. Do you know what they are? Are you ready to face them and “climb every mountain” till you find your dream, the dream that God has for your life?

Obstacles are opportunities to discover God’s will for your life. If you face them with the determination to discover His will and do it wholeheartedly, what you now see as a challenge will turn out to be a gift.

What obstacles are you facing? How can you embrace your obstacle as an opportunity? Here are some perspective-shifting tips.

How to Start Getting Where You Want to Go

February 18, 2023 Cathleen Zahradnik

I’ve always dreamed of traveling. One of my first adult jobs was working in a travel agency because I loved the idea of travel.

Let me start off by saying that this particular business wasn’t a great place to work. The employees were not valued and cared for. On the first day, I was told I would be referred to by my middle name because they already had several employees who had a similar first name. Great start, huh? I never did more than help people book flights. “Why didn’t they just book them online?” you ask. Because at the time most people did not have computers and nobody had a smartphone. In fact, only a few of the agents working in this office even had a computer. The rest of us made phone calls to the airlines to book flights and hand-wrote tickets for customers who would come in and pick them up.

I didn’t work there long, but I did get an office “fam” (familiarization) trip to Puerto Rico out of it and fed my desire to travel to Alaska by fulfilling my responsibility to file brochures to places starting with the letter “A.” (Remember, no internet research. Beautifully printed brochures!)

Why am I talking to you about travel? Because going somewhere always starts with a dream. When was the last time you dreamed about where you would like to be in your life? What do you envision yourself doing that would satisfy your hunger to fulfill the potential you were born with? What do you dream of doing that would set you on the path to discovering the more you know you were meant for?

Where do you want to go in life and how do you get there? Here’s how to get started.

How to Determine Where You Are On the Path Toward Divine Potential

February 11, 2023 Cathleen Zahradnik

GPS is a wonderful thing. You open your phone and go to your navigation app and the little blue dot tells you exactly where you are. If you are home, maybe that is not such a big deal. But if you are traveling and feel like you might be lost, that information is key. Once you know where you are you can determine if you really are lost and then you can plot a course for continuing your journey. You can make a course correction if necessary or you can just keep going because you are on the right track after all. Ah, GPS! If only a GPS was available to determine where you are regarding fulfilling your divine potential!

If there were, this task would be a lot easier, but there isn’t. You and I need to do some hard work in recognizing where we are in relation to fulfilling our deepest desires and designed destiny.

In previous posts, we have been considering what we want out of life and what we value most. You have begun considering where you want to go, but you can’t plan how to get there until you know where you are beginning your journey from.

Where are you right now? Are you on the right track or do you need to make a course correction? Here are some things to consider.

One Key to Discovering Your Destiny

February 4, 2023 Cathleen Zahradnik

Do you notice tiny distractions? Do you see the small truths that rise to the surface of your regular routines? If you do, what do they reveal about you?

I’ve never been a big fan of the fairy tale, The Princess and the Pea, but if there was a pea under my mattress I wouldn’t notice it, would you? That little thing wouldn’t bother me. I probably wouldn’t even know it was there. Yet, for the princess in the story, the pea kept her awake. It revealed who she really was.

Underneath all the layers of distraction that this world throws at you is the tiny kernel of who you really are and what you want most. That kernel contains the truth of your deepest desire and dearest hope. How aware are you of that desire? What do you really want out of life?

September 12, 2026

This is Not Forever

As I tearfully opened the sodden boxes of our stored belongings, wondering what was ruined, a verse came to mind,

We were temporarily living with my parents, and our stuff was stored in Tom’s parents' garage. They had a plumbing issue in their bathroom above the garage, causing a leak that soaked several of our boxes and other items, including our mattress. We weren’t sure what was salvageable.

That period of time was already difficult. We were waiting for a job to open up and unsure how long that would take, how long we would be living with my parents, how long our stuff would be stored. Both sets of parents had been patient, loving, and gracious. There was no one to blame for the water damage. Sometimes things just happen.

But when that verse popped into my brain, it completely changed my perspective on going through the damage. The tears didn’t stop. There was some mourning and disappointment. But at the same time, there was hope. This was temporary. These things were just things. What really mattered was how I responded. I could choose an eternal perspective. I could choose to treasure Christ more than an earthly possession.

As it turned out, very few of our things were unsalvageable, and insurance more than covered anything that was lost. But the eternal perspective I gained is a treasure that I still carry. That simple shift helped me through the three and a half years of living in the in-between.