New year thoughts

Ah…a new year. I love the word new – it’s loaded with such freshness and promise. I, like many others, love the chance to craft a new list of resolutions and goals. I write up overviews, think through the to-do’s of a busy life, journal my prayers and commit my life in the year to come to God for His leadership and strength. I consider the areas I failed in the past year and try to come up with something more effective that might work this year (you know, like ‘you don’t get dinner unless you’ve exercised’). As an inveterate box-checker, the new year provides a candy store of stuff I can happily make lists over.

I’ve even done a bit of this for 2013, will probably do more. But 2012, being the year of upheaval, uncertainty, and demand that it was for me, has drawn me into a different thought process for this year. Usually I get a ‘theme’ from the Lord of what we’ll be working on for the year, He and I. But the season before me holds the possibility of great change, and I’m not sure I have the luxury of following a comfortable checklist to keep me on track.

So my new year ‘aims’—my list for the year, look more like this:

~ Seek God more.  Learn to still my flurried heart in His presence until I have my cup filled.

~ Make time in the Word priority, work more of it in every chance I get, any way I can.

~ Then obey it!

~ Make my first response worship and praise.

~ Be more loving. Be more patient.

~ Be a better listener. 

~ Be quicker to act in obedience to the Holy Spirit and His promptings.  Be available.

~ Be more flexible. In fact, it would probably be good to go out on a limb and say ‘have no agenda’ and ‘have no expectations’—other than expecting to see “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

~ Just do my best, every day.

~ Leave the rest to Jesus.

There’s probably more. Oh, yeah…one big one:  simplicity. With apologies to Martha, I think “One-Thing” Mary really embodies my heart desire this year. I am certain that the complexities and needs of her life were just as ‘met’ as Martha’s were, for all her planning and fussing—only in peace and simplicity.

That’s my aim for 2013!