Resolutions

I love the new year, don't you?  Bring on all the old aphorisms about starting over.  We all get a clean slate, a fresh start, a new beginning.  Many of us choose to make promises to ourselves, set goals or list resolutions.  It's all pretty much the same.  Some of those promises are improbably wishful thinking, for example:  compete in a triathalon, bag all 50 Colorado 14-ers, or buy a $1,500 Cannondale road bike and Ride the Rockies. Others are perhaps the result of holiday excess:  stop drinking or lose weight.  Then there is the perennial:  stop smoking and start exercising.  I thank God  neither of those are on my list.

I'm considering 5 resolutions for 2012.  Here they are in no particular order:  1.  Drink 64 ounces of water every day  2.  Write a letter to everyone who sent a Christmas card to me  3.  Ride my bike every day  4.  Read through the dictionary  5.  Buy a really cool pair of boots.

Five resolutions are probably 4 too many, so let's strike the "every day" ones.  Drink 64 ounces of water every day.  Really?  I've been trying to do that since I was 17.  I start the day with 16 ounces, and that's about as far as it gets.  How about 64 ounces of coffee?  My coffee maker instruction booklet (yes, I read it) states that "coffee is 98% water."  Coffee should count.  On to riding my bike every day.  We're already 12 days into January, and I've gone for just 2 rides, so that's out.

Read through my Merriam-Webster's 11th Edition Collegiate Dictionary.  Now that is something I really wanted to do.  And I got to page 5.  I was going to make a list of really cool words I came across, but realized I would pretty much be copying my dictionary.  I got this idea playing Scrabble.  We allow each other to use the dictionary at will. I just keep reading and reading instead of finishing my turn and inevitably say something like, "Some time I'm going to read through the dictionary."  Do you know the word abecedarian?  I love it!  Definition:  "One learning the rudiments of something (as the alphabet.)"  There are 1,459 pages in my dictionary which divided by 366 comes to 3.98 pages per day.  So if I get right on it and make up the 42.76 pages I'm behind, I could accomplish that goal.  Or, I could spend all summer reading the dictionary.

Writing a nice, newsy letter to everyone who thought of me at Christmas and sent a card is a fairly easy, worthwhile task.  I can do this.  I'm not going to Microsoft Word either.  I'm doing long hand, snail mail stuff.  Considering I sent only a picture of my grandchildren along with their names and the words "Faith, Hope, Love & Family," I think anyone who sent a card to me deserves more.

The last one is kind of a promise to myself:  buy a really cool pair of boots.  You probably think this is something normal that normal people do and unworthy to be on a new year's resolution list.  Just do it.  Well, it's not that easy--not with my big feet.  Women's sizes aren't big enough, men's sizes are too wide and definitely not cool enough.  This is a huge challenge that might take the rest of the year to accomplish.

The resolution I want to keep most of all isn't even on the list.  It might sound corny or trite, but here it is:  I want to be more like Jesus.  Jesus is so many things to me.  He's kind, understanding and willing.  He doesn't judge my day-to-day failures, and I'm pretty sure He doesn't keep a list of all the wrongs I've committed.  He gives me second chances and a brand new day every 24 hours to start over.  He loves me unconditionally, and I want to love others the same way.  I know how.  I just keep getting off track.  As soon as I do, there's my Encourager, my Cheerleader, my Deliverer, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who resolved 2000 years ago to take my place on the cross and never give up on me.  So here's to 2012, and here's to love.  Resolved:  to get better at loving.  We can all make that our new year's resolution.