My One Resolution for 2015

Well, I’m back after a much needed and thoroughly enjoyed Christmas break.  I hope you’re back, too!  I have to admit I did worry that you would run off philandering with another girl who blogged her way through Christmas, but every once in awhile I do need to shut up, so maybe it was a much needed break for all of us.

Since we last talked a new year rolled around!  I thought by 2015 we would be enjoying those flying cars they kept promising back in the 80s.  But, here I am, still driving my minivan with the peeling paint.  Maybe before they figure out flying cars they should spend a little time developing car paint that doesn’t peel off.  And by “they,” I mean those elusive, mysterious people in the world who figure things out.  I talk about them a lot.

Every time I begin a new year, I try to get motivated to do things differently.  To be a better housekeeper.  To get organized.  To save a bunch of money.  To learn how to cook exotic things.  To listen more.  To be a better mother.  To be a kinder person.  To be a more agreeable wife.

And, every year by day two I feel like a miserable failure.  This year I even picked a fight with Chad on New Year’s Day.  Yes, you heard that right.  I ruined my resolution to be a more agreeable wife in the very first hours of this brand new shiny year.

And, honestly, I haven’t recovered yet.

I have found myself dreading this first week of returning to real life, heading back into the routines that weigh me down, feeling discouraged and defeated before my feet even really hit the ground in this new year.  I actually spent this afternoon going through all the things that I need to do this week that I don’t want to do. Meanwhile, my house is a mess.  I have a terrible attitude.  I am the epitome of everything my normal resolutions try to ward against.

Even Downton Abbey coming back tonight isn’t enough to make me feel better.  I mean, it’s serious, y’all.

So, instead of filing this year’s resolutions under the category of every failed journal, every incomplete project, every abandoned exercise plan that I have racked up through the years, I have decided, on this fourth day of the new year, to try something different.

In 2015, I have a goal:  I will NOT follow my heart.

Yes, you read that right.  This year I will choose to ignore the lies that my heart dangles in front of me like a juicy carrot on a stick.  When my heart says to zig, I will zag.  When my heart says you don’t feel like it, I will get up and do it anyway.  When my heart says you’re never going to be good enough, I will declare that good is not my goal, but holiness is.  When my heart taunts me with all of the world-approved, ungodly ways to be a wife and a mother and a blogger and a pastor’s wife, I will reject those ways and reach for goodness, gentleness, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, and self-control.  When my heart says you deserve respect I will fall on my face in humility before God.  When my heart says you should be offended I will turn the other cheek.

And, during all of this mess of dealing with my wicked and deceitful heart, I will fail.  A lot.  People who know me will wonder what happened to this goal.  Another failure.  And, my heart will say, See?  What’s the point?  

It seems like I already know how this mission will turn out.  I will be misled by my heart, I will fall for its lies, I will grab for what I shouldn’t and I will fall on my face.  I won’t be perfect.  I won’t even be pretty good.  But, this year, I won’t trust my heart or rely on it.   I will follow Christ.  And, when I stumble, when my heart convinces me to go the wrong way, I will remember that every single time I turn around, I walk straight into the arms of God.

And, that is really my one resolution this year: to rest in His arms, trusting in His strength when I am weak and puny and much too heart-led.

So, that’s where I begin 2015.  Not feeling like a super star.  Not proud of myself.  Not convinced that I am God’s gift to the internet or to my husband or to my kids.  Just in the arms of God.  Looking at my own heart with a critical eye.  And, resolving to hear more from God and less from that deceiver that the world tells me should guide me through life.

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9

Are you making resolutions this year?  Anyone else fall on your face on the very first day?  I’m so thankful for a patient Savior and for understanding humans.  2015 is going to be a great year.