New Year's Resolution

OK, I’m a week late – but I’m here!  Showing up must count for something.  I’m enjoying all the stories about resolutions for the New Year because it’s amusing how many words can be written about losing weight.  I can sum it up in three words – QUIT EATING COOKIES. 

One New Year’s blog that I’m really enjoying is Jon Acuff’s site.  He’s encouraging his readers to make 2012 the year they finish some projects.  I like that idea.  He has some very practical advice on setting things up to help the readers complete projects they’ve been contemplating, or even working on for years, and I plan to implement several of his ideas.

But when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, I don’t make them anymore.  They got to be a burden – one more thing to make me feel bad about myself.  So I don’t do resolutions anymore.  I even take the completion goals with a little bit of caution.

From the comments posted on Acuff’s site, I can tell that most of his readers are young.  The good thing about being young is you bring an urgency to the task of reaching your goals that really helps.   You don’t want to waste any more time.  That urgency gives you a push to get things done that a grandma like me envies.  But the bad thing about being young is you bring an urgency to the task of reaching your goals that might make you fail to appreciate some pretty good stuff along the way.

The most important things I’ve learned in my life didn't happen when I was at a big completion party.  The lessons tended to be learned while I was standing watching the party cruise sail off without me.

You know that little clicking shutter sound a camera makes?  I have it in my head, and I think it when I’m in the middle of a moment that I want to remember the rest of my life.  My best mental memory pictures almost always caught me by surprise.  They weren’t planned.  They didn’t come at the completion of a big project.  They just happened, and I clicked the shutter in my head and captured them.  One of my favorite mental snapshots happened on a Mother’s Day when I was sitting at the organ in church.  I looked behind me to check on my four sons sitting in the front row.  As I turned and saw them, I thought, “You guys are the best thing I’ve ever done.”  Click went the shutter.

I grew up in a family that memorized Bible verses, and today I’m remembering Ecclesiastes 9:10, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”  (I used to quote that verse to my brothers whenever it was their turn to do the dishes.)  So while I’m working on “whatever” this next year, I’m thankful God will be by my side whispering those lessons He wants me to learn.  And I’m looking forward to hearing some shutter clicks go off in my head.

PS – Jon, I really, really am going to try and gather my ideas together for a book this year.  Promise.