How Are You Meeting The New Year?

Each year I get to the end of December, and along with everyone else, I start thinking about New Year’s resolutions. Some years I have been full of resolve to make some big changes having felt the Lord’s clear prompting to seek growth in certain specific areas of my life. The New Year is a perfect inspiration for new beginnings. At those times I’ve taken joy in setting goals through prayer, and asking God to lead me toward growth in the New Year. 

Then there have been times that I’ve gotten to the end of a year and realized that I had been striving much after my own personal ideas of growth and self-betterment and not enough toward what God may have wanted from me. At those times my reflection has revealed to me how I had set sky-high standards based on pressures from the world around and had certainly been harsher on myself Lord would have been had I accepted His goals for my year. I've finished the year feeling tired and defeated by my own overly ambitious and legalistic standards. Such realizations then caused me to come to the New Year with a desire to live free from self-imposed burdens and rather to simply resolve to abide in Christ and follow His lead day-by-day. Those were seasons for focusing yet again on what it means to carry His easy yoke and light burden rather than creating my own grueling and heavy ones.

There are also the years where January 1st has come in the midst of such flurry that the only resolution I can muster is to cling to the Lord and try to survive whatever season I’m in! One of those years involved an incredibly colicky baby that gave me no more than 45 minutes of sleep at a time during his first 5 months of life. My resolve then was basically just to cling to God however I could and keep my family alive until the massively stressful season of no sleep and constant crying would finally come to a resolution of its own. I think that was the year that I firmly resolved never to have any more children… But that was also after the second of my now four children...

I would imagine that there will be a number of other ways that I’ll meet the New Year as I continue on in life. How about you? How are you meeting 2015? Do you feel the Lord prompting you toward some specific resolutions? Is this year a year to resolve to let go of your own plans? Or, is this an intense season where you are feeling like the biggest resolve needed is that of clinging to the Lord for survival?  Any other sorts of New Year’s feelings that you’re experiencing? 

May God richly bless each of you as you meet the New Year wherever you are at!

P.S. Tomorrow we look forward to sharing some updates with you about our community here! We’ve got some resolutions of our own!