giving in / living up

for the past two weeks, every time i look at my blog, i think, "i need to blog again."

this thought is quickly followed by a prideful "i'm not doing one of those new year's resolution blogs where i arrogantly broadcast all my quasi-resolutions so that my dear, attentive friends can thoughtfully ask me how i'm doing keeping them at just the time when i've failed to keep them at all."

then comes, "wow, that's a really pessimistic take on resolutions, and i don't even feel pessimistic about this year."

which then serves to remind me how often and how strongly we hold onto feelings and resolutions, conscious and unconscious, that arose out of past hurts and disappointments and still manage to dictate many aspects of our present lives.

several years ago, i resolved, quite contradictorily, not to make over-ambitious new year's resolutions that somewhere deep down i knew i didn't intend to keep anyway. i would still think of certain areas in my life and habits that i wanted to improve, and would brainstorm practical, feasible ways of doing so, but would NOT share these with anyone and would certainly not label them "Resolutions". the pessimist, after all, suffers the least disappointment.

but what reason, or rather, what right do i have to be a pessimist when i have been so richly blessed by God's grace, not to mention all the tangible blessings He has bestowed on such a squanderer as myself? is there a difference between what i call pessimism and what the Word calls Unbelief? and is there anything more damaging to my relationship with God, husband, family, friends than distrust, unbelief and the pride that necessarily accompanies them?

when asked last evening by a dear friend about my refusal to make Resolutions, my answer seemed so, for lack of a better word, lame. it is pessimism. it is unbelief. it is fear of failure: a fear that betrays the still thriving belief that i should somehow be a success on my own, without Grace and without Help. and it is not only fear of failure, but fear of being seen to fail, fear of being naively hopeful, fear of being found out.

i don't want this year to be dictated by these fears. so here are my Resolutions, i.e., Prayers, for this and coming years:

-to be more attentive to the lives and needs of others, especially those close to me.
-to do less complaining and more building others up.
-to be more healthy
-to be more thankful for God's Grace and Blessings, the greatest of which are my family, my friends, new and old, and my husband.
-and finally, to believe.

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

"All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained."

Philippians 3:7-16

Happy New Year.