Resolutions, etc....

I'm one of those silly (read, "naively optimistic") people who makes New Years resolutions. Sometimes they last for a few weeks. Sometimes they last for months. I can't recall any that have made it to the following New Years. But whether you ace the follow-through or not, I still believe that there is value in the resolution-making process. The thorough and periodic evaluation of one's life and habits and priorities is essential to living intentionally.

In a perfect world, I would take a few days after Christmas and retreat alone to a cabin in the hills with a giant mug of tea and my Bible and journal. I would go in scattered and worn, and I would emerge three days later a new woman - restored and focused and ready to take on the coming year, with whatever challenges and blessings and craziness it might bring. But this world is not perfect...it is real. So I've spent the days since Christmas catching up with the relationships, the work and the general tasks of life that seemed to fall a bit behind during the holidays. I DID get to go to the mountains and sip hot cocoa by a fire, but it was in a ski lodge with 50 Young Life kids, so while the trip included lots of fun and bananagrams and knitting and snowboarding (okay...not so much snowboarding. More on that topic later...) and some bonding over a few cases of the 24-hour-flu, it offered very little along the lines of solitude and reflection. And so, I feel a bit like I've hit the 2012 ground running, without a real good chance to assess the situation.

Nonetheless, I still managed to get a few resolutions on the docket. Unoriginals that I just whipped up on the 8-hour drive back from Bozeman the other night.

For one, I'm nixing my diet coke habit. I don't think it's continuation would kill me real soon, but it's not exactly contributing to my health. Second, I'm going to try keep my hands and eyes off of my phone while operating a vehicle. If I keep it up, it will kill me, and probably someone else, real soon. So I'm kicking it to the curb. Lastly, I'm making a line item for travel in my monthly budget so that I can quit feeling like a victim of my own wanderlust.

So, those are my resolutions. They are specific and concrete, like any good "life-coach" worth his weight in consultation fees will tell you resolutions should be.

But those things are not the real things. The most important things. They are not about my heart. The real change I need this coming year is in my heart. And it is change that, in it's fullness, is well beyond my capabilities. Beyond resolutions, or better habits.

I need this year to be about loving people well. About knowing Christ more. About knowing how Christ loves me. About being changed by that love. About viewing my finances and my time and my other resources the way God views them. About Him redeeming my incessant need to compare myself with others, my twisted view of His mercy, my graceless criticisms of others.

These kinds of revisions are more than I can handle. I know this. I've tried. I've made checklists and reminders on post-its and many, many, well-intentioned "pinky-promise" prayers. But these issues are deeply rooted, and not easily or comfortably plucked from the landscape of one's soul.

Consequently, I am grateful for a savior whose affections are too fierce, too vast to leave me in the mess of myself. Who loves me here, but longs to bring me there. Who is more than capable of doing the heavy construction in my heart, that will, with time, produce fruit in my life.

So as we dive headlong into the new year, I pray for these things in my life, in my heart. I also pray for a day of solitude and tea...very soon.

Oh yes. And adventure. Always adventure.