Resolving Not to Resolve

Today is the day.

We dream about all the things we want add to or eliminate from our lives. We dream about how wonderful life will be when we finally do. And the list is long. There is so much left to do with our lives. And tomorrow is the start of something new and wonderful!

We vow to post on our blogs every day.

We vow to eat healthier food.

We vow to paint that room or finish that design concept…finally.

We vow to get in shape, drop a few pounds, and tone our muscles.

We vow to start that degree or finish that degree.

We vow to read our Bible, pray, and fellowship more faithfully.

We vow to get our yard, our house, our finances, our legal affairs in order.

We vow to travel to that destination on our bucket list.

We vow to be slower to anger and more ready to laugh with our children, our friends, and our family.

We vow to be the best version of ourselves, the best us we can imagine.

And then comes January 2, January 3, and so on. And each of our noble vows becomes a challenge, a stumbling block. Our inability to keep them makes us feel like a failure. And then we rewrite the rules, tweek the plan, and somehow end up further from our ideal self than when we started.

So I invite you to join with me, resolving not to resolve. Don’t make a New Year’s Resolution! January 1 is not the day to set goals and become the you that you dream of.

Instead, I invite you to join me in being the best we can be each and every day: to love where we are, to serve others, to laugh, to express our creativity, to learn something new, and to embrace responsibility; to recognize that the perfect us will never be, perfection only belongs to our Savior. But you and I will find moments of perfection and cling to them when the failures come. And you and I will rise to a new day and start all over again!

Each day is a new beginning!

New Encouragement: Weekend Praise

So let’s talk about the joy and pain of blogging.

If you read my blog with any regularity (you know who you are and I love you), you are familiar with the common theme of living for God in this chaotic world. As a wife, mother, employee, and volunteer, it’s easy for me to get so busy that I loose sight of God, and consequently, I don’t write regularly. Part of it is lack of time and part of it is lack of subject matter. It’s hard to be encouraging when I’ve not taken the time to be encouraged myself.

So to ease the process and keep this ministry vibrant, I created a hootsuite account over the summer which allows me to plan lots of little posts–Bible verse, inspirational quotes, and images–for the FB and twitter feeds. I usually set a week or more at a time. And as I subscribe to my own blog’s pages, (fellow writers, I know I’m not alone here), I too am feed weekly by the tweets and updates. What am discovering is that while the little posts were nice and sweet, Sunday school type posts when I selected them, when I read them at their post times, they seem meant for just me and what I’m dealing with on that particular day. It’s clearly a God thing!

Since that strategy has become such a blessing to me and others (as analytical stats prove, yes we writers love those too), I’m adding another layer of regularity to keep us encouraged as well. And in a medium that I LOVE!

Please welcome…

Each weekend, songs of inspiration, praise, and rejoicing will post while I’m in the midst of my typically kid-filled, housework laden, from here to there chaos.

My prayer for this new “column” is:

May these songs make us pause for a few moments, return our thoughts to God, find our center in His love, and plunge back into the weekend with renewed energy and purpose.

So let the praise begin…

Loving the Like

When I was in college, I took a course called Religion in America. (The course text was Religion in America by Julia Corbett Hemeyer. It’s packed full of great information and very accessible.) The course was wonderful. We learned about all the major religions practiced in the United States, the differences between the major Protestant denominations, and how the manifestations of these religions differed in the United States in comparison to other places in the world. It was such an enlightening class!

Unity in Silence

The best part was that we visited many ‘worship areas’ and spoke with the ‘worship leaders’ of the religions and denominations that we studied, including Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Quaker, and the five major Protestant denominations. I learned very quickly that there is beauty in the worship styles of all religions. Actions, perspectives, and mindsets that allow the believers to connect with God and their fellow believers are all valid and beautiful. One of my favorite is the Catholic prayer candle.

For those of you who don’t know, when a Catholic is in church and prayers, they have the option of lighting a candle to signify their prayer and for their fellow Christians to see all the prayers that have come before them. I’m sure a Catholic could offer a much more eloquent explanation, but that’s the jist. And how beautiful! To know that you are not alone in your prayer, in your faith, in your need. You are not alone.

That’s how I feel about the Like button that we use each day in our social media world. We social media beings share our humor, our celebrations, our struggles. We share ourselves. With one click of that Like button, we are not alone. Our voice has been heard, our journey has been shared, we have been validated.

So today, I’m loving the Like. Each one encourages me to write more, share more, think more, and grow more.

How many social media beings can you encourage today?

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Please encourage me!!!