New Years Weirdness

I get kind of weird around New Years...sort of idealistic, and compulsive...and conflicted. For example, I find myself longing to give away almost everything I own...while at the same time I'm keenly aware of all the stupid, material things I want since Christmas just happened, and I spend more time in shopping venues in the month of December than I do during the other eleven months of the year combined. Also, I get really antsy for change. Since - typically speaking - I'm not a person that does things too impulsively this usually amounts to me painting my nails red, or ordering meat for dinner. Fleeting thoughts of cutting off all my hair, or quitting my job and moving to Brazil enter my head, but I always think too much about poor motives, and/or negative long-term consequences...so I end up dismissing such thoughts.

In addition, I become somewhat obsessed with the notion of blank slates, and new beginnings...I like the idea of strategically planning ways to become more the person I want to be, and the person God wants me to be. This may come as a bit of a surprise to anyone who knows me well, because I'm sure there is little in my life that looks strategic, or ordered, or planned. Which is perhaps why I find things like 30-day challenges and goal-writing sessions intriguing. They promise an environment for concrete, organized, forward moving thoughts...and sometimes I just really need that as a diversion from the norm. (Just for the record...I don't think I've ever undertaken a 30-day challenge of any kind...I just like the idea of them :)

Since I've been thinking about these things, and what I'd like to change in 2013, I decided I better start with where I was a year ago.  So I dug deep in the recesses of the 2012 blogs (there was a total of four entries this year...so by "dug deep" I mean I scrolled to the bottom of the page) and reviewed last years January 1st essay on resolutions. Wait; before you go looking for it let me save your the trouble of scrolling to the bottom of the page. My 2012 resolutions were as follows:

1. Quit drinking Diet Coke.
2. Quit being preoccupied with my phone while driving
3. Set up a line item in my budget for travel
4. A couple of paragraphs about changes and growth I'd like to happen in my heart...and how none of those can really be summed up in a "resolution"*. 

I'll just tell you - straight up - the first two were failures. I'm pretty sure I've had a diet coke at some point in the last ten days, and I read my email at a stop light on the way to the coffee shop I'm sitting in right now...so suffice it to say...both were ineffective. I did not set up a line item in my budget for travel...however, I have managed to tuck away a few bucks here and there, and my sister and I have a trip to Paris on the calendar for May. I consider this a partial success. Check back in June to see if I still feel the same way, or if I'm home mourning my failure to make it to France this year. 

As far as that last messy bunch of things I listed in that entry (hopes, desires, whatever you want to call them) it's just as hard to measure a "success" in this area of spiritual development as it is to plan out the way to get there (as soon as I pull out a spiritual measuring stick, I nosedive into legalism). Sometimes Jesus has a different journey planned...so your final destination, as well as your means of transportation are not what you originally thought they were going to be. Sometime you think you're going to take a hatchback to Murdo, and you end up on a circus train to Morocco. Or something like that. 

Either way, I listed some vague ideals about loving people better, and knowing Jesus better, and being less critical of myself and others. Like I said, I can't measure those things. But I'm pretty confident in saying that 2012 was a year of growth in my life. I have learned more about Jesus...and how he loves me...and how that love manifests itself as grace, and how because of the grace he's shown me, I can extend more grace to others. I've also learned about how counter-cultural the notion of prayer (as an alternative to anxiety) is. There are lots of other things I've been learning too...which I plan to write about in the days to come. Because that, of course, is another one of my New Years Resolutions. :)

I am - undoubtedly -  a work in progress, as we all are. The things I learned, I learned mostly because I got it wrong a million times first. I learned them because God is unbelievable gracious and patient with me. And I will, of course, need to learn and relearn them over and over again. 

That being said, it doesn't matter how many time I fail at my resolutions, I have - in recent years - become an incurable optimist, and I will continue to make them...at New Years, and throughout the rest of the year. So my 2013 New Years Resolutions are as follows:

1. Quit drinking Diet Coke
2. Quite looking at my phone while driving
3. Go to France

And of course, some other vague things about running, being on time, and getting to know Jesus better.