My New Year's Resolution

I have this ritual. A tradition, if you will.

Every New Year's Day, I take down the Christmas stuff, clean my entire apartment, and purge everything. I take bags and bags of things to Goodwill and bags and bags of things to the dumpster. By the end of the day, it is as if Christmas were never here. My apartment smells fresh and clean. My closets, cabinets, and cupboards are lighter and roomier. And, usually my lower back aches because I am getting older now, and that is what lower backs that are getting older do.

Usually, in this state of OCD bliss, I make my New Year's Resolutions. I always list the amount of weight I want to lose first and the amount of debt I want to tackle second. Then, I wrap up the list with the desire to change some terrible flaw in my personality. There. Done.

But this year: something different. Here I sit on New Year's night, with a little more than an hour until it turns into the 2nd of January. The tree is still up, the apartment is only half-way cleaned. The bags and bags of things are scattered here and there, waiting to be taken to their appropriate resting places. For the first time ever, I am not writing my resolutions down in a cheap, spiral notebook, I am blogging them. And, those New Year's Resolutions look different, too.

2010 New Year's Resolutions

1. Learn more of the Word:

I grew up in a church. I cannot remember a time that I did not have a Bible of my own. I went to a Christian university where Bible classes were non-negotiable to graduate. I worked as a counselor at a Christian camp. I went on mission trips. There is absolutely no reason for me, at 32, to not know the Bible backward and forward. But, I confess to you, that I do not. I have read most of it. I have studied a lot of it. I can quote a few verses. But, I do not KNOW the Word of God. So, I resolve, with some help from Dallas Theological Seminary Center for Biblical Studies and some personal Bible studies that can be purchased at your local Christian bookstore, to learn more of God's Word. The struggles of the past six or seven months have always led me to a calling to know His Word. But, I have not heeded that calling until now. I am expecting, as with every instance when obedience takes place in the Kingdom of God, for big things to happen with this learning.

2. Take on an adventuresome spirit:

I like structure. I like schedules. I like lists. I like being in charge. These personality traits do not lend themselves, willingly, to someone wishing to be adventuresome. However, after reading Donald Miller's new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I have taken on a new mantra: Live a good story. So far, I have lived a safe, solid, comfortable story. There is nothing wrong with living that kind of story. Except that it is kind of..... boring. My mother writes a Christmas letter each year to catch all her friends up on what has happened in our family since the last Christmas letter. The blurb about me was.... boring. It isn't Mom's fault. I didn't DO anything all that exciting for which to write about. And, so, God help me, I resolve to throw off the need to control everything and take on an adventuresome spirit. I resolve to recognize and participate in the adventures that are happening right under my nose, in my own life, that I don't see, right now, as adventures. And, I resolve to seek out and participate in other adventures that God sends my way.

There. Done. And my lower back doesn't even hurt.