2017 New Year’s Resolutions and Old Habits

 I never was much good at New Year’s resolutions. They always feel like promises made in the glow of celebration... then forgotten in the grayness of January.

But I still find myself writing them down, year after year. Not so much resolutions, maybe... more like quiet hopes scribbled in the margins of my Bible or on loose pieces of paper I tuck into books and forget about. Things like “Be more patient.” “Pray more.” “Stop letting fear run the show.”

I found one of those old pieces of paper today... crumpled between the pages of a notebook from a few years ago. I read through the list, and it could have been written yesterday. The same words, the same struggles. It’s strange how much changes and how much stays the same.

Maybe I thought that by now, I’d have more of it figured out. But here I am, still wrestling with the same fears, the same restless ache for something more. Faith doesn’t seem to fit neatly into resolutions... it slips through them like sand.

But I think I’m starting to understand that resolutions aren’t really about fixing myself or making everything neat and tidy. Maybe they’re more like prayers I keep coming back to. Not to cross off a list, but to keep trying.

I guess what I’m really hoping for this year is to be okay with the messiness. To stop expecting myself to have it all together. To keep coming back, even when I feel like I’m failing.

I don’t have a grand plan for the year. Just a quiet hope to keep trying. To be kinder to myself. To keep searching for God’s presence in the ordinary, imperfect days.