The year started in a place I didn’t expect: New York. As the hours winded down to the last midnight of 2013, all I could think about was being somewhere else, figuratively. Literally. I was supposed to be at the beach in Ecuador with my sisters’ husbands’ family. I was supposed to be drinking a gin and tonic, playing cards, and worrying about getting sunburned. Instead I was watching Harry Potter at my parents’, thawing out from a deep freeze, and waiting for the year to be done. Counting minutes.
I woke up on Wednesday, January 1st to acknowledge what I’ve always known: The passing of a New Year’s Eve changes nothing but the date.
The idea of “New Year, new you” hurts me, especially when people try to impress upon others that this is what they’ve been waiting for—a new year is all they need to move into becoming who they always wanted to be. It makes it sound so simple, so easy. But it’s not true. The changes that matter never occur so neatly in sync with the changing of a year. The changes that matter are never simple, never easy. The changes we need require sacrifice and growing up, wrestling and processing. Anything less than that and you’re kidding yourself if you think the change will last longer than a case of bad hiccups. Since when was real change easy? Since when did it require nothing more than counting minutes?
I’ve been counting minutes for too long, hoping enough would pass for me to see the changes for which I’ve so longed. But that’s all I’ve been doing. Counting minutes. And let’s face the facts: I’m not good at math. So with these realizations, I have to reckon with the truth in front of me, and the truth begs the question: What now? I think the problem with resolutions is that, eventually, we decide they’re not that important after all. This is a consolation we try to offer ourselves for not being able to follow up on commitments. “Oh, it’s okay. I don’t really have to lose weight.” Or “I don’t really have to read the Bible in a year.” Or maybe “I don’t have to try to uplift everyone. They just don’t get my sarcasm.” But when the end of this new 2014 rolls around, you have to acknowledge something in those resolutions is worth it if you’re coming up with the same resolutions you did as the year before. So if here I am, 2014 me, hoping for the same things as I did as 2013 me, am I really willing to just keep throwing hope out the window every time the resolutions lose their luster?
God is in those resolutions we make. He is in the disappointment when we give up on them three weeks later. Writer C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
God will use this world to point us to the next. He will use this world to draw us to him. I shy from making resolutions, especially at a time in my life when everything feels like a question, but I can’t ignore the disappointments because it all points me to a greater Hope. Whether we want it or not, there is more. Whether you resolve to find it or not, there is something in us all that desires the changes that matter, the changes that outlast a few minutes. Maybe this is the time to pursue the Only One who can bring about those changes and fulfill those deepest hopes.
a scribble of jo 