New Year's Resolutions

I always think about whether or not I want to do New Year's Resolutions each time the calendar creeps toward December 31. Some years I have made very concrete resolutions. Other years I've made more general ones like learning to accept myself and be me. I know of other people who've picked a word that they want to focus on in the next year, like "grace." I've also heard the idea of making an anti-resolution - stopping something you've been doing that's unnecessary. For example, "I resolve not to finish a book I'm not enjoying."

This year, I've decided to do things a little differently. I'm going to make 12 resolutions of daily habits - and focus on one per month. For example, floss, do yoga, write for 10 minutes, and so on. For the most part (other than the exercise ones), I'm trying to keep it to things that can be done in under 10 minutes. After all, most resolutions can make it for ONE month.

It takes 23 days to build a habit, so if it's something I want to continue to do daily that's an option. (The things I'd like to do that with are starred.) But I don't want to feel obligated to do that - after all, the compounded time of 12 things that take 10 minutes each is 2 hours a day! My main reasoning is, there are a lot of resolutions I could set, but if I try to tackle them all at once I'm setting myself up to fail.

Here's my list:

Jan - read devotional*

Feb - yoga* (*habit to form is some kind of exercise)

March - play keyboard

April - eat a fruit

May - run

June - play with dogs 10 minutes*

July - do a Spanish lesson 

August - floss*

September - blog*

October - play guitar 

November - write in my novel for 10 minutes

December - write appreciation letter

Be

I decided to do something a little different for this year's resolutions. In the past few years I've set a bunch of tangible goals to achieve that year. And I've generally met or come close to meeting about half of them, which I count as success. It's more than I would've done without any goals.

But 2011 was a year of so many unexpected things, some good, many bad. It was a year of change. And as I thought ahead to 2012, I realized my plans don't come to anything without a steadfast devotion to God. I prayed last night, as I drove home from the bingo bash at work, that no matter what this year holds, no matter what I lose or gain, that God will help me go through it with faithfulness, endurance, and unswerving love for him.

And as I thought about what I want to accomplish this year, I didn't think of tangible, measurable goals. I thought about some of the blogs I've written lately and who I want to be. So these are my two resolutions:

Be you.

Be first.

The "be you" resolution relates to the blog I wrote a couple weeks ago, "Come Define Me." My sister has challenged me to embrace my pickiness. It's not a sinful thing, and it's a part of how God made me. And as my Come Define Me blog indicated, I've been thinking about a lot of ways I haven't been the person God created me to be, letting others define me instead. This year I want to work on letting God define me. That's not to say I won't work to change the sinful parts of me. But I want to embrace the person he made me to be. I want to embrace who I am in relation to who he is.

I love this quote from Rob Bell: "You be you. Don't be somebody else, we already have one of them." So that's what I resolve to do this year. Be me.

The "be first" one means I want to be first in the kingdom of heaven. I blogged about that recently, too. And when my nephew (age 4) was talking about wanting to be first this Christmas, I said to him, "You know what? Jesus had a secret for always getting to be first. You want to hear it?" His eyes lit up. "Yeah!"

"Put everyone else before you. Jesus sees it backwards. So if you put yourself last every time, you're really first!"

I want to be first where it counts this year. I want to lose my attitude of entitlement and serve God humbly, being last in this world so as to be first where it counts.