January 2026 is substantial in a number of ways. First, it is my husband’s and my very first wedding anniversary–HURRAH! Second, we are wrapping up a huge, several month project of renovating our first home together. We repainted the whole house, tore up old carpet, worked on countless repairs, and have begun trying to recover a lawn that was not cared for by the prior owner. It has been months of hard labor, but it has been greatly worth it. When I look over all my work, I feel a flourish of pride, and the words come to mind, “Look at that…I painted/fixed that thing.”
Finally, the last of our belongings have arrived at the new house, and I am drawing a sigh of relief that carries the weight of several years worth of crazy moves. Between the years of 2022 and 2026, I have moved a total of seven times. One of those moves was a cross-country trip when I married my husband and relocated to Florida. By far, however, this final move has been the hardest. For a number of reasons, it has been physically taxing, but what I really have struggled with has been more of an emotional difficulty. What is it like to really having a permanent place?
I have not done entirely terrible with grounding myself in my living spaces. Particularly when I had my own apartment, I made an effort to make things feel like my temporary space was a home. Although I was limited, I found ways to hang things on my walls, I organized my kitchen just the way I liked, and I had goals for updating my living space in a way that was economical and made it feel more homey. The result was a living space that felt entirely comfortable and safe for me–something I spent years trying to obtain.
This stated, there was always a lingering feeling of the potentiality of having to move AGAIN. No matter how settled I felt, I was always having to look for the next living situation, and that caused me to feel like I did not belong anywhere. My home life was in constant chaos, which caused me to throw myself heavily into working on my career. At my work, that is where I found (a bit more) stability. While I could not see the pathway for my personal life, my professional one had a clear way toward the next thing.
As a result, I got into this bad habit of saying “yes” to everything, which can serve one fantastically if they are trying to grow their career. I said “yes” to new job roles, traveling, and helping out with those in need, which were not bad things, but were often done at the expense of myself. While my professional life was thriving, my personal life was blowing up with smoke.
As with any sort of imbalance, this inconsistency between career and personal life came back to bite me after a time. I ended up being entirely exhausted, not taking care of myself physically, and being drained emotionally, mentally, and spiritually…you get the picture.
Thus, now having finally somewhat settled my personal life, I find myself reflective on the time where I said “yes” to everything at the expense of myself. I am learning it is better to do less than more, especially since I have lived in an overly busy routine for nearly a decade. It is time for me to take back some of what I have lost over the past decade. 2026 is my year of health.
2026 is MY year of health
While there is no exact formula for balancing your life, this year I am focusing on three branches: physical, emotional, and spiritual. Additionally, this is something I am doing entirely for myself, and I am praying that grounding myself in these ways will lead to a better, healthier version of myself. This will help me be a better wife, daughter, friend, and overall human being–and, what excites me is that it is entirely focused on the things I personally enjoy and love.
Without further ado, here is what I am finding works for me in creating a life of balance.
Physical Balance
I have been working on improving my physical health long before launching on anything new in 2026. Last year, I caught up on doctor visits, and started formulating some goals for the new year. More than wanting to lose weight, I have wanted to understand nutrition and making sure my body is getting what it needs. Discovering I had significant fertility issues prompted me, at age 28, start taking my health more seriously. I am now researching, planning, and accumulated resources I need to get my body into healthier place.
What has turned out to be the gamechanger has been a combination of my Meal Planning and my personal Health Journal. Meal Planning has been fantastic for my financial budget, but it also is helping me stay on top of what is in my refrigerator and ensuring I am cooking meals that are healthy for myself and my family.
It has taken a bit of diligence, but every weekend I take time for my Meal Planning by sitting down and physically writing out everything my family is going to eat for the next week. At the most, this takes me 15 mins out of my weekend, and, having done this enough, I am becoming faster because I am creating familiarity with what my family likes eating.
Writing our menu out also helps me with planning around work schedules and from keeping me from trying too many things at once. Slowly, I have introduced new meals into the planner, which has been transformative in creating a solid, more balanced diet. I have also started eating new things: butternut squash has recently become one of my favorites.
I have also learned that having my meal plan for the week on my refrigerator works for the family. No one ever asks, “What is for dinner” because they can see it. I found an amazing magnet calendar set from Target that works well for me, but most anything will work from any fancy calendar to a simple piece of notebook paper. Having it consistently written out and posted is what is the most important thing over aesthetics.
In addition to my meal planning, putting together my Health Journal has been essential to helping me fight against bad habits and creating better ones. Daily, I log my food, water intake, if I took my vitamins, etc. As a person who has a hard time stopping and remembering to take care of myself, this has been transformative. I am better held accountable for nutritionally taking care of myself. I also have a recipe index (a work in progress) I created in the back of my journal that lists every single recipe I like using for my Meal Planning. Every time I have a recipe I enjoy, I list it in this index with the page number from the cookbook or where I can find it online as a reference.
Meal Planning and my Health Journal has me eating, sleeping, and exercising better than I have in all of my adult life. I am excited to see where this journey takes me throughout 2026. So far, it has been absolutely enjoyable!
Emotional Balance
Having emotional regulation is so difficult for me, but I do notice taking care of my physical needs always ensures my emotional ones are better supported. Sometimes, it is a lot more difficult navigating this portion because I do not always know what it is I need to feel emotionally in a good place with my life. What I am learning, however, is for myself it is essential to ensure I am not saying “yes” to too many things, I keep off of doom scrolling social media, and am taking more time to enjoy my personal hobbies.
I have been taking a personal inventory of the things I enjoy doing. Creating this blog is one such hobby, but I do not want to overtax myself. In the past, I would have gone all-out trying to figure out how to grow my platform, make social media calendar, and work on building a brand. While I think that would be a fantastic venture in the future, for right now I simply want to enjoy the creation process and allow time to mature my skills.
What I have started doing is rewatching some older movies/series I personally enjoy. I am an avid Jane Austen fan, and it is time for me to watch through all the versions of Pride and Prejudice again. I am also listening to music I enjoy–the other day I sat down and worked on creating a new playlist for myself.
I am trying to learn how to crotchet. I keep having to pull out stitches on my granny squares, but I am slowly learning how to create a well-made square. If I feel overwhelmed by a project, I put it away and take a break. It does not matter if it takes me a year to make the granny square blanket I desire. I am on my own timeline at my own pace.
And, of course, there is this thing of letting myself rest at home more often, which is so essential to my wellbeing. I wish I could give people a glimpse of how I have historically lacked this time carved out for myself for the majority of my life. From early childhood to my teens, my parents were involved in ministry which took away a huge portion of playtime and relaxation. Then, as a young adult I worked a job while putting myself through college before becoming a store manager with literally no free time. Truly, if people could see how much of my life was robbed, I know they would say, “Oh, I get where you are coming from. No, please stay home.”
Right now, they have to take me at my word that my life needs space for quiet and a good deal less than from the past. It is essential for me moving forward in a healthier way. Emotional health = BOUNDARIES. I am creating them, and sticking to them, which is helping me be a better person when I do show up and participate. Boundaries are also helping me with keeping safer people in my life who are kind and loving. Being in good company supports my emotional health, which is why I am striving to treat myself with greater care in this area.
Spiritual Balance
Being a Christian, church and community have always been essential to maintaining a healthy spiritual balance for me. But, it also goes beyond hearing a sermon preached from a pulpit. I am trying to bring home what I hear and experience at church into my daily life, maintaining a simple devotional routine, remembering to pray daily to the Lord, and always strive to learn something new.
There are days when I feel like staying in bed and not going to church, but when I push through and sit I am overwhelmingly blessed. My church has many Bible studies, as well as an evening service on Sundays. While I do not hit all of them, I try to at least get to something every month. Life can be busy with schedules, but carving out time to go and learn more about Scripture always builds my life in a positive way. The effort is worth it!
Maintaining a devotional routine is a habit from last year is something I am bringing into 2026. During a premarital counseling session with my pastor, he encouraged my husband Peter and I to daily start reading the Bible and pray for each other. Peter and I started out in the evenings with this routine, eventually moving to the morning as we found it helped with us starting our day better. We worked our way through several books of the Bible, Samuel I & II being an amazing read that was surprisingly relevant to a lot of personal trials we were facing in our first year of marriage.
At the end of each devotions, we pray for each other. Goodness, does this allow for both of us to talk through some deep things! It is also like the most amazing check-in you can do with your spouse every day. After talking, we take whatever is on our hearts to the Lord, and this has done so much for building our relationship with God and with each other.
I have found it essential to always be trying to learn something new about the Bible, myself, or the world at large. Whatever personal mix of personality God gave me, there has always been this underlying need for me to explore some of life’s big questions. I do not know, but there is a constant existential portion of my brain that will not ever shut up, and if I do not explore things I will not sleep…effectively destroying my physical balance goals, hah.
This past year I read a lot of books. This year, I intend on reading even more; especially books that talk about God, why mankind is flawed, and my responsibility as a Christian. Feeding my spiritual knowledge enriches much of my life in a way unable to be written into a simple blog post focused on health. Just be ensured that reading, and satisfying this part of my soul and brain, is essential to my own journey.
In years past, I have tried to accomplish things beyond ideal. I really fell for the girlboss trap, which is why this year I want to continue trying to live a life that is softer. Around this past Christmas, I was hit with the thought, “Assuming I live a full life, what would happen if I took just one solid year entirely to myself to work on the things I should be working on?” Now, that is the mentality I want to take forward into the rest of my life. It is not just about one day, one week, or one year. It is about a life of striving to do better and take care of ourselves.
It is a new year. I have no resolutions apart from I am going to take care of myself. How about you?
-Emily