New Year's Resolutions

I have only two.

1) Live one day at a time.

2) Hang on to faith and hope.

I think everything else should fall in line with these two things. Sure, I’d like to lose weight (and with my stomach shut off by a plastic apparatus, I should be able to manage to lose some). I’d like to journal more, pray more, get in touch with old friends, be a better parent, be a better wife, be a better housecleaner, stay more calm, be more patient.

But I need to do these things one day at a time. For today, I need to do just what I need to do to make it through today. I don’t have to focus too much on the rest of this week, or next month, or next year. I just need to calmly get through every minute, every hour, every day. Methodically, step by step.

And now I digress. I remember that song: “Oh God, you are my God, and I will ever praise you. I will seek you in the morning, and learn to walk in your ways, and step by step you lead me, and I will follow you all of my days.” This song was new in 1991, the year before I left for language school in Costa Rica. I learned the song and as I was making my decision to go to Mexico as a short term missionary/administrative consultant it ran through my head often. Three weeks after not meeting a single Christian or making a single friend in language school (they were there to PARTY and I don’t) I met a couple missionary families who were there. The last week I was there I attended a children’s concert at an English speaking school there and heard that song. It was such a relief and such a consolation to me at a difficult time. It was like God was there to remind me that after all I had been through that He was the same God that was with me years before. The song is still one of my favorites.

So now I will digress further. Another song that has meant a lot to me we had as the recessional for our wedding. And we’ve had at the baptisms of several of our children.

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
;Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
;With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;
The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God, Whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

This song is also a tremendous reminder of God's faithfulness from one year to the next. In June it will be 10 years since our wedding and the song still holds true even after everything we’ve been through together.

Back to the subject. I am planning to hold on to the faith and hope passed on to me from my parents and proven again and again throughout my life. I live with a lot of people who have not yet learned faith and hope, and I resolve during this next year not to let the fact that they do not or cannot share this with me cause me to let go of it. God IS good, ALL the time, and there is awesome hope for a new and better tomorrow.

So, 2006, hit me with your best shot. Living one day at a time with faith and hope, we’re going to move forward, make progress, experience great joy, and even experience great pain. But in the end we will know that God’s faithfulness is great, God’s mercies are new every morning, and that God has kept us in His grace, and has indeed given us guidance when perplexed. Life and any evil in it will NOT overcome, because, led by the one who conquered even death, we will NOT be shaken.