a sinner's new year

I have a confession: I like New Year’s Resolutions. They work for me. My best one was when I resolved to either get twenty rejections or at least one acceptance letter (to article queries). I figured I couldn’t control whether or not someone wanted to publish me, but I could control how many decided NOT to, just by making sure I submitted to that many. I ended up with about five or six rejections and three acceptances, which was a dream come true.

That experience taught me that New Year’s resolutions can be practical tools, rather than misty aspirations. The key seems to be to think about it a lot first: to think, what is it I want to change? Ideally, how would I bring that change about? And then – and this is the step I think a lot of people miss – realistically, what’s a step I can take toward that change? Because you can’t, say, guarantee that you’ll lose twenty pounds. There are so many variables there. What you can do is take control of one or two of those variables, and work on them till it makes a difference.

The other piece of this method is realizing that your will is only the smaller piece of the puzzle. While it is ours to direct our wills, the primary thing we’re supposed to be doing with them is submitting them to God’s will. I think that He made me with intelligence, and means me to attack the problems in my life with my wits, but He also means me to submit all my conclusions to Him.

Practically this means:
1) praying about my resolutions.
2) realizing that trying to control my selected variable might not work.

Regarding the latter: I don’t make unbreakable resolutions, because I don’t know what God has for me this next year. I make “as-far-as-it-depends-on-me-and-oh-yeah-I’m-a-fallable-sinner” resolutions. Any number of things might happen that would keep me from keeping my resolutions, and if those unforeseen events are events over which I have no control, I don’t want to beat myself up. E.g., if I resolve to go running every day, and I break my leg while walking to the car, I’m not going to castigate myself for breaking my resolution when I’m not out jogging the next day.

So, my resolutions go like this: I want X, so I resolve to do Y in pursuit of that this year, by the grace of God, given that my life in December reasonably resembles my life in January.

And regarding the former, praying about my resolutions, well, that’s why I’m still finalizing them, even though it’s now the second week of January. I want time to really think and pray about my goals for this year, and so I’ve only made a couple of resolutions: to read through the Bible and to pray the hours (in a modified manner I’ll discuss in the next post).

I’m still pondering some ideas about fitness, writing, parenting and housekeeping, but I don’t feel any clarity on those resolutions, and I won’t make them till I’m sure.

But I do like resolutions. Anyone else, or am I the only weirdo?

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell