Another Chance

 

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     I love the new year. The end of the year is a chance to let go of things past, re-prioritize, set new goals, and look to new opportunities.Many of us do this personally, but how many of us do this as a family?

   *Let go of things past*

     It seems that everywhere I look, people are making jokes about family stress during the holidays. I'm not talking about stress caused by grief and trying to figure out how the holidays are supposed to look without the ones we love. I mean the petty disagreements and old hurts caused by one another in times past. Families get together  and struggle through their celebration of Jesus' birth. The focus is on ourselves and what makes us comfortable or uncomfortable instead of on Jesus and the fact that He came into the world to give us a second chance. Christmas should be about extending the grace God to one another and forgiving each other in those areas where we have hurt each other the most. It's a new year coming up...a new and second chance to offer that grace to the ones we love the most.

    *Re-prioritize*

     This one affects me. I seem to always lose sight of my priorities during the year. The busyness of life just catches up to me and though I am constantly trying to find that "home base" throughout the year, I find that I get most fired up January 1st. This is where I am able to make the most of my commitments and where I can pump myself up to try again. I stop beating myself up in areas where I have messed up and it's truly a new beginning for me. I always reset my priorities in my time with God, my time with my family, and my focus on what is eternal instead of the temporal.  As far as our family goes, we re-prioritize all year round. My husband and I talk about it all the time, so that helps. How about you? What do your family's priorities say about you all as a whole?  Do you see issues in your children? Your spouse? If your family members need to work on re-prioritizing, consider sitting down together and  discussing it as part of a new tradition on New Year's Day. That way they can learn to do that in their personal lives too.

    *Set new goals*

     I love the idea of setting new goals, but to be honest, I am terrible at it. This is different than re-prioritizing. I think of re-prioritizing as setting things straight in our minds and hearts, but goal setting is taking it a step further, making new commitments and writing them down so that they are in front of us all year round. They are what hold us accountable and the fact that I lose site of my priorities is a clue that I am not good at setting goals. One of my goals this year, is to set goals. :) I especially want to do this for our family. I want to be more intentional with sitting down with them and discussing the goals we all have as a family. I have written about it, but my follow through has lacked luster. But that is OKAY, I am letting go of it and starting fresh! Lord willing, I plan on sitting down with my family and setting family goals this year. I hope that in July (Christmas in July), we will sit and take a look at them and see if we are hitting the mark or if we need to make some changes. Do you do this as a family or just as a personal discipline? If not, consider extending that to your entire family so they can learn how to set goals and follow through being held accountable by each other. To know more about that, you can visit a past post: Goal Setting.

    *Look to new opportunities*

     We are a family of opportunity! We have little success with it, but we always have big ideas, big hopes and big dreams. One of my favorite things about the New Year is the hope to see those dreams finally come true. I have to constantly remind myself to look to God and not to the dream. It's something I know, but still something I need to remind myself of all the time. God is my hope. God is my dream. God is my Giver of dreams. If it's not His dream for me, I don't want it. This year, we have new opportunities. They are BIG individually and as a family. I am setting a goal to trust God as we walk them out. If they are not God's, I don't even want to go there. What kind of opportunities do you have this year? Are you trusting in God or your opportunity? I have learned that how we respond to disappointments within those opportunities reveals where our trust lies.

*But there's good news!*    

No matter where we are in our year, God is able to accomplish new things within us and He doesn't need to wait until January. So if you find yourself "falling off the wagon" this year in your New Year's Resolution, get back up and rest in the fact that His mercies are new every morning!