A New Year

I can't remember the last time I made any New Year's Resolutions, but in the days leading up to January 1, 2013, I felt really hopeful and excited about change in the coming year.  There's nothing on our family calendar so far that is new or different or exciting, but I felt excitement over a fresh start.  (And as Anne Shirley says, "You never know what's around the bend in the road."  I'm always looking for something unexpectedly exciting to happen.)

Every morning offers a fresh start with renewed mercies of the Lord, and an entire new year of fresh starts seems hopeful.  

I read something last week that challenged me:  "A goal without a plan is just a dream."  I was blog-hopping through several new year posts, and that phrase stuck with me.  I wondered if writing down my goals for the year would help me make steps to meet them.  I didn't want a list of rules; I know I'll break them.  But having goals I actually try to meet and new habits I build into my day seemed like a good thing.  

I made my list yesterday.  Before I wrote down my goals I wrote a list of four priorities, because no matter what I might hope to change or accomplish in 2013, I wanted to remember and keep focused on the most important things in my life:  loving God, loving my husband, loving my children, and loving others.  Keeping up with a cleaning schedule can't get in the way of spending time with my kids.  It's not worth that.  I really found that writing things down yesterday helped me keep my mind focused on the things I really wanted to accomplish with my time throughout the day.  It kept me from wasting time and made me choose to do something with Ella when I might have just sent her to her room for quiet time and done whatever I wanted.  

I didn't meet all of my goals for yesterday, but I didn't beat myself up about it as usual.  Instead I just felt empowered to press forward, and it was a good day.

I remembered these encouraging words to those putting their hope in Jesus last night:

  

And we all, with unveiled face,

beholding the glory of the Lord,

are being transformed into the same image

from one degree of glory to another.

For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:18

I laughingly told KJ, "Now THAT'S change we can believe in." 

On Loving Your Enemies

"...we might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbour 

as yourself means...how exactly do I love myself?

Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of

fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy

my own society.  So apparently 'Love your neighbour' does not

mean 'feel fond of him' or 'find him attractive'...

Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap?  Well, I am

afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments)

but that is not why I love myself.  In fact it is the other way round:

my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice

is not why I love myself.  So loving my enemies does not apparently

mean thinking them nice either.  That is an enormous relief...

Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me

long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man:

or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.  For a long time I used

to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction:  how could you hate what a man

did and not hate the man?  But years later it occurred to me that there was

one man to whom I had been doing this all my life--namely myself."

C.S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity