It's that time of year when everyone, everywhere seems to be chattering away about New Year's Resolutions. People promising that This Is The Year they will finally lose weight/exercise more/save more money/write that novel/learn the ukulele (delete as appropriate).
While all that might not be everybody's cup of tea, New Year's Day does always seem like a good time to think about the year ahead, and what might be to come.
Just like the start of 2014, I'm beginning 2015 with a sense of excitement and expectation. Last year has gone, so it's time to stop dwelling on all the things that didn't quite go to plan, and start thinking about what's next.
Last year, I decided that I'd ask God to give me a couple of words for the year. For 2014, they were love and grace. And actually, looking back, they sum it up pretty well. Turns out I had a lot to learn about both of those. I hope I got a bit better at doing them both, too. But the most important thing was that I experienced God's love and grace in ways I hadn't before, right up until the last second of New Year's Eve.
I wanted to do the same again this year, and so I've been spending time praying and reflecting on what the words might be. For 2015, they're passion and restoration. I've got a couple of thoughts about what that might look like, at least for the early part of the year, but I'm looking forward to finding out what God's got planned. Those are two pretty exciting words.
I love having those things as "themes" to focus me for the year. But I do also like to have some specifics that I can look back on further down the line. There seems to be something inherently half-hearted in the concept of New Year's Resolutions these days; the expectation seems to be that everyone will ditch them by the middle of February, and everything will be "business as usual" from there on in. Not wanting to ignore the idea completely, however, I thought about what I could do as an alternative.
[In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention at this point that I have made one resolution this year: that I will, somehow, learn to understand and appreciate cricket. But you get what I'm saying...]
There's one idea I came across as a teenager that's stuck with me ever since. I was at church on the first Sunday in January, our first youth group meeting of the year. I can't remember exactly how old I was, but it must have been at least a decade ago.
Our youth leader at the time sat us all down with a pen and paper, and asked us to write a list of things we wanted to achieve that year, and seal it up inside the envelope, with our name on the front. He then collected all the envelopes up, and we promptly forgot about it for 12 months.
The same time, one year on, he gave them back. The timing was amazing: I remember having been thinking quite a lot about how little I felt like I'd achieved that year. There's no greater cure for that feeling than being presented with a list of things you wanted to achieve at the start of the year, and realising quite how many of them you did achieve. I'm sure it goes without saying that I hadn't achieved all of them, but as it turned out, the ones I didn't quite manage didn't seem quite so important a year on.
So, in order to try and prevent a repeat next year of my end-of-year, I've-achieved-nothing blues, I'm giving it a go again. I'd really encourage you to have a try too. They don't have to be huge, world-changing things (although they can be) - just a few things that you want to grow in, or see, or do during the upcoming year.
To me, that's more meaningful than some resolutions that, let's face it, I'll probably have ditched by Valentine's Day.
That's a very good idea. I'm going to do that now. Remind me this time next year that I did so ......
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