"January is the new week after Christmas."
I don't know who said it or where I read it, but I kind of dig this.
I'm not sure about you, but after a bustling month of December and a glorious extended celebration (with our whole family) of Christmastide to Epiphany, New Year's in the middle was hard to give proper annual attention to.
Finally settled back into routine just this week the initial inclination to feel behind dogs me. Why? Why do I allow this? Is someone watching the calendar or peering into my journal waiting for my resolutions, goals, intentions? Will I imminently fail 2025 if I don't have all my ducks in a row on January 1?
I do, however, believe in the discipline of writing things down. A year-end inventory to exit one year with a feeling of completion is a good place to start and enables launching into the next with intention and vigor.
Don't click away if you aren't a fan of New Year goals/resolutions or whatever word makes your skin crawl. Trust me to the end that I have your best interest at heart!
At the finish of 2023, I recorded successes and failures of the goals set the previous year. I had to dig out my journal to find them. Lesson learned - not a good practice to just write the list once as some hopes were forgotten by February.
Additionally, from the get-go I framed my intentions in hopes that keeping them in front of me would ensure a higher success rate. This was a good practice.
Did I still "fail" at about half of them? Yup. But because I set so many, I found a better probability of return.
It's good and right to keep track of successes which lead us to celebration and thanksgiving. Probably not too many of us record our failures alongside but I find it a kind of grace. A starting point for the next year. An evaluation asking, 'did this matter anyway?' Or a recommitment to give it another go. (Also, permission to not have to kill it every time, no one can reach this status.)
Lesson learned - second year in a row I vowed to use my cookbooks weekly and didn't. I have a myriad of them I love and cherish. But do I pull them out on the regular to select a tried and true? Ahem. Don't judge me. Who can resist the convenience and speed of Pinterest finds? At least I do that.
Consequently, perhaps I should resist carrying it over to 2025 endeavors. Does it really matter? Can life still be good and pleasurable and meaningful? My husband would respond, "That's fine - can we get rid of all these volumes now that take up so much space?" Get rid of my gorgeous hardbound recipe collection?!
Alas, this is why he and I will not be having this conversation.
What about you? Are you on it? Have you set in motion (in writing and action) some fresh initiatives for the year ahead? If you have, high five!
Or do you rarely turn the annual page with a plan to guide you? I hope you'll consider trying something new.
Remember it doesn't have to be so lofty it's unattainable. One of my favorite authors - whose book I read every winter - writes, "I scribble my list of promises. The ways I hope to be kind. To be gentle. To forgive. To try and try again."*
Character, not production perhaps?
Maybe you, like me, just need a bit of quiet time to look back with gratitude and resolve for all 2024 meant to you (make adjustments in expectations of self and others) and some stillness to wonder and dream about the future with appropriate growth-inducing challenges.
Embrace January for this purpose - as long as it takes. Let it do a finishing and beginning work in your soul.
Take a look at what you really want. How a life well-lived is defined as and move toward that with gusto. Don't worry about failure - it's imminent and shows you tried and that's a win.
Consider what might enrich your life. Add it. Subtract what won't. Make a little list. Check it twice. Frame it? Give yourself purpose and grace all year long.
I will steal more from my winter-appreciating mentor, a more contemplative direction:
Dear New Year, "...each new year demands my full and unwavering attention. Demands the full attention of all of us standing here on the cusp, filling our hearts and our imaginations with promises, vows, hopes, resolutions of the deepest kind.
I beg you, nascent year, to be gentle. I realize the gentle needs to come from deep inside me. I need to find the holy balm to steady me through rough waters to come. I'm bracing myself with double doses of those few things that have proven to be my salvation: prayer; silence; rampant and unheralded kindness; the rapt company of a rare few companions, deep in the act of holding up each other's hearts."*
Isn't that beautiful and pointed? You can steal it too. For a "successful" new year, we all need prayer, silence, kindness, a few trusted companions to hold each other up. Double doses! And Jesus to focus all our gaze on, our Savior, Brother, Keeper who prays for us daily (John 17:20-26).
Revelation 21:5 teaches us, "He is making all things new."
May that be said of you and me in the year ahead. Amen?
Let's revisit this in twelve months.
*The Stillness of Winter by Barbara Mahany P. 96-97
