Back in June I wrote Post #6 about my eleven goals for 2025. I am going to post tomorrow about my 2026 goals, but today I wanted to reflect on the progress made in 2025.
As I mentioned in Post #6, each year, I buy a set of PowerSheets from Cultivate What Matters. The first part of the PowerSheets goes through their system for identifying what matters on a big-scale and then what needs to happen this year to make progress on those big-scale priorities. PowerSheets has a space to set eight goals. I have been using PowerSheets since 2021, and each of these years I have set eight goals. This year, though, I decided to set more than eight.
My first goal for this year was a spiritual growth goal: continue my morning prayer ritual. I have building this ritual since October of 2024, and it started with me listening to an episode of Ascension Press’s Podcast “Bible in a Year” with Father Mike Schmitz while I followed along in my Bible. As of June 2025, I had added prayer journaling in a Mary Square prayer journal, praying for my husband using The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie OMartian, and writing in my One Line a Day journal. All of this took me about forty-five minutes, and I loved starting my day this way.
Unfortunately, the progesterone injections I had to take during my first trimester this year left me with sever fatigue. That fatigue really did a number on my morning routines. I basically laid in the bed until the very last minute I could each morning. I still listened to “Bible in a Year” most days, and I am currently 95% done with that podcast! I intend to finish in January of this year!
Now that I am off the progesterone injections and feeling more like myself again, I want to restart my morning prayer routine. I will probably start slow and rebuild back to where I was in June. I know that this routine will likely have to be flexible once the baby comes in May, as well!
My second goal for this year was to start growing our family. I talked about our struggle with infertility in Post #4. Sean and I decided at the end of 2024 that we felt called to grow our family through Embryo Adoption which I talked about in Post #8. I am currently twenty-one weeks pregnant with a baby girl. I am amazed at how successful this goal was this year. When I wrote it down in January of 2025, I could not have known the joy in store for us in successfully conceiving during our first round of Embryo Adoption! I sometimes can’t even believe that I am actually pregnant.
My third goal for the year was to create margin in my schedule for when our family grows. In 2025, I finished my Master’s degree, stepped away from youth ministry and being a Disney Travel Agent, and switched jobs to a teaching position that gives me more flexibility. All of these changes make me feel that I have completed this goal!
My fourth goal was completing my Master’s in Theological Studies, and I graduated in May!
My fifth and sixth goals are under health and wellness. The fifth is to fuel my body well and the sixth is to move my body well. I really did not make progress on these goals this year, and they are being moved to top priority for 2026!
My seventh goal this year is to pay off our debt. We did pay off some significant debt this year, but we did not finish paying off everything. Looking forward to continuing this steady progress in 2026.
My eighth goals was to continue a weekly home reset ritual and a daily tidy ritual. This goal failed miserably! Luckily, two of my sisters, one of my cousins, and some of my friends came over in December to help me get the house back on track after I did nothing during my first trimester. It is looking significantly better, and I am hoping to establish some home routines in the second quarter of 2026.
Cultivate What Matters has a category for work and learning. I have historically used that category for my educational pursuits. I place my “work” goals under a category I created that I call “Vocation.” This year, my ninth goal was to teach well. In the first half of the year, I taught my second ever college course: History and Philosophy of Education. I had not taught this course before, so I designed it from scratch. I was very happy with how it turned out. This fall I taught Integrating the Arts in the Elementary School Classroom and Human Development. I am very happy with how these courses turned out, especially in light of how exhausted I was this semester.
My tenth goal was to read 52 books. I read 85! I am most proud of my Well-Read Moms books: The Father’s Tale, Pride and Prejudice, Cry, the Beloved Country, Persuasion, and Giants in the Earth,
My eleventh goal was to use my Silk + Sonder journal. I purchased an annual subscription of these journals. I did not keep up with this as well as I would have liked, so I did not renew my subscription to these for 2026!
To conclude, here are my 2025 goals:
I’d love to hear how your 2025 goals went! Comment below, or email me at elisabeth@mission-today.com.
Mission Today 