I personally detest New Year’s resolutions.  Everybody makes them, few people actually are successfull with them.  Last year, with Brian’s help, i set some pretty intentional goals.  And i didn’t complete a single one.  Did i make progress on any of them? Yes, actually.  I made decent progress on all of them. But i did not actually finish any of them.

For the past few months i’ve been thinking about what 2011 will be like.  I decided to not go down exactly the same goal-setting path that i used last year.

This year i wanted to pick an overarching theme, and fit my goals to that theme.  For much of the past few years i’ve struggled with discontentment, wishing things were different, wishing i was somewhere else doing something else.  I’ve come to a place in life where i realize that doing that is really counter-productive, and in terms of my relationship with God it shows a real lack of faith on my part.

I came to a place a few weeks ago where i realized that i needed to focus on being present, being here. Living in discontent means living in escapism, and never really truly being part of what is going on, and never DOING anything about the discontentment.  So, although this phrase is not truly original, this year for me is the year of here.  The year in which i am fully present in my relationship with God, my relationship with my husband, my relationship with my son, present in my own life, present in my church, present in my world.  That sounds like a lot!

I believe it begins with my relationship with God, and all else flows from that.  As Brian asked in his sermon this morning, what am i going to do to increase the intimacy of my relationship with God?  This has been an ongoing struggle for me, as it is for many believers.  We carry patterns of thinking and behavior from our human relationships into our relationship with God… instead of the other way ’round.  My strongest desire is that this is the year where i finally am completely surrendered to God, where i finally give over that level of who i am and give up control.

I still want to set goals, but i want my goals to be informed by my theme for this year.  So, as of yet, i don’t know what those goals are.  I’ll be taking some time this week to pray, think and write.  I do have an inkling of at least one goal, in terms of being present in my world.  We sponsor a little dude in Rwanda through Compassion, and I’ve done a crummy job of letter-writing.  My goal is to write him once a month and keep up on praying for what is going on in his life.

Anyway – i’m not making any grand and glorious plans at the moment.  Right now, I’m simply waiting on God to show me what He wants to accomplish in my life this year.