“My One Resolution”

Every time I begin a new year, I try to get motivated to do things differently. To be a better housekeeper. To get organized. To save a bunch of money. To learn how to cook exotic things. To listen more. To be a better mother. To be a kinder person. To be a more agreeable wife. And every year by day two I feel like a miserable failure.

So, instead of filing this year’s resolutions under the category of every failed journal, every incomplete project, every abandoned exercise plan that I have racked up through the years, I have decided, on this fourth day of the new year, to try something different. In 2022, I have a goal: I will NOT follow my heart.

Yes, you read that right. This year I will choose to ignore the lies that my heart dangles in front of me like a juicy carrot on a stick. When my heart says to zig, I will zag. When my heart says, “You don’t feel like it,” I will get up and do it anyway. When my heart says, “you’re never going to be good enough,” I will declare that good is not my goal, but holiness is. When my heart taunts me with all of the world-approved, ungodly ways to be a wife and a mother and a friend and a pastor’s wife, I will reject those ways and reach for goodness, gentleness, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, and self-control. When my heart says, “You deserve respect,” I will fall on my face in humility before God. When my heart says, “You should be offended,” I will turn the other cheek.

And during all of this mess of dealing with my wicked and deceitful heart, I will fail. A lot. People who know me will wonder what happened to this goal. Another failure. And, my heart will say, “See? What’s the point?”

It seems like I already know how this mission will turn out. I will be misled by my heart, I will fall for its lies, I will grab for what I shouldn’t, and I will fall on my face. I won’t be perfect. I won’t even be pretty good. But, this year, I won’t trust my heart or rely on it. I will follow Christ. And, when I stumble, when my heart convinces me to go the wrong way, I will remember that every single time I turn around, I walk straight into the arms of God.

And that is really my one resolution this year: to rest in His arms, trusting in His strength when I am weak and puny and much too heartled.

So, that’s where I begin 2022. Not feeling like a super star. Not proud of myself. Not convinced that I am God’s gift to Olney or to my husband or to my kids. Just in the arms of God. Looking at my own heart with a critical eye. And resolving to hear more from God and less from that deceiver that the world tells me should guide me through life.

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”

Jeremiah 17:9