December and January, for me, mark the ending of a season and beginning of a new one… even if there is carry over from the end into the beginning. It’s a time of assessment, introspection, ticking the boxes, developing a new ‘game plan’ – whatever you want to call it. But it really is important to look back to see where you were a year ago and how you’ve progressed on your path to your goals. Perhaps it is because I was raised to make New Year’s Resolutions, but this habit still sticks with me.
Mom’s approach was quality over quantity when it came to developing those resolutions. Two kept were far more important than 10 made and broken immediately. Was there dedication behind keeping the resolution or only lip service. Then again she had a kind of ‘second sight’ (discernment in Christian-ese) that she could ask the right questions to discover if there was a determination to ‘improve’ or not.
Besides, if the same resolution kept being broken and repeated the next year, then this was the basis for a different kind of conversation. I’ve come to believe that her desire was to help me become the best me I could be – which should be the mindset and goal for any resolution regardless of when it is made. So, in determining your ‘success’ or not from last year should be the starting point of developing the new year’s goals and benchmarks to assess how you are doing in terms of growth.
Quite honestly if you have no intent, purpose, reason to fulfill goals and objectives then why make them? If you don’t, at least yearly, look at yourself and who you are and becoming, what your relationship with the Lord is, how you go about being and doing you, how you interact and communicate with others… then do you have endings and beginnings? Do your chapters, seasons, whatever you call them end so you can move toward your new beginnings? They can you know. It depends on whether this is what you want, what you are willing to do to accomplish this and what you are willing to do to stay the same.
