It's a New Year!

Happy New Year!

It's a new year . . . now what?

The Christmas decorations are all put away.  The urge to shop has waned since the bills are piling up.  The kids are back at school, you're back at work, and perhaps the post-holiday blues have set in.  The compulsion to write your New Year's resolutions has come and gone, and if you've written them, you're probably still working on them.  If you haven't written them (nay, even scoffed at them and those who write them), life is back to "normal" (whatever that means).

Did you know the average new year's resolutions only last two weeks, but it takes 21 days to make something a habit?  Depressing, isn't it?

A few years ago, I assigned my students a journal topic: "New year's resolutions get a bad rap.  Write five goals for the new year."  The incredibly observant students said, "There's no difference between a resolution and a goal, is there?”  I replied, "It's all a matter of semantics."  I was teasing them a bit, but it's still true.  Resolutions, goals, list, whatever you call them, they are the human's desire to perfect, to improve, to make life just a bit better.  Benjamin Franklin called this the "bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection."  In his "Autobiography," he wrote, "I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined."  Really?  As my daughters would say, "Duh!"

So what do we do?  We have a desire to improve, yet we know we're doomed to fail.  Now what?

If I had written a list of things I wanted to improve upon, the list would be pages long.  I have a deep-seated desire to be perfect, but one glance at my computer/desk area or cluttered living room bookshelves, and you'd know I'm far from it. I have a suspicion that I’d be in Franklin’s shoes, finding faults but not as surprised by them.

At the top of my list, however, is the desire to recapture the closeness I have felt with God.  Oh, how I long to be close to Him!  After what my high school youth director used to call "mountaintop experiences," I feel so in tune with the Holy Spirit and spiritually on top of the world. Yet, the hectic pace of the holidays and the end of my first semester teaching college classes sure killed that impulse and stuck me somewhere in a snow drift or some such place far below the mountaintop. I have no sure-fire formula for achieving closeness with God.  I’m only human and “so much fuller of faults.”  My game plan is to read the Bible more, pray more, and write more in my journal.  Will I keep up with my "resolution" to write every day? I am sure there will be days that I will fail.  Life gets in the way of my plans, most of the time.

I think making goals, or resolutions, are good.  I really do.  I also realize that as humans we're bound to fail.  So the solution, as I see it, lies somewhere between the law and grace--the law of our list versus the grace God extends to His children.  Most of all, dear friends, remember that God loves us just the way we are, in spite of our lists and best intentions and foibles.

Oh, and by the way, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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Pattie Reitz is a writer and a teacher. She received her B.A. in English Education in 1991 and her MSEd in English in 1995. Pattie has experience teaching several age groups: middle school for one year, high school for eight and a half years, and college for five semesters.  She received training in 1997 as an Advanced Placement instructor in English and in 2002 as a teacher-consultant with the Greater Kansas City Writing Project.  

In addition to her work at Writers Remember as Assistant Editor and Journaling & Writing Prompts Guru, Pattie is a book reviewer for Armchair Reviews (one of Writer's Digest's 101 Best Web Sites for Writers, 2006), and blogs about books at Bookworm's Nook, a blog on Dot Com Women's network of blogs. She is also a member of American Christian Fiction Writers. She considers journaling and personal narratives her passions in terms of writing genres, and she loves to encourage others to record their stories.  Pattie has had a few pieces published, both in print and online, and her current goal is to write more for publication in 2006. Online, Pattie is a moderator on the Women at Home message board and up until recently worked as a community leader on iVillage's former Journaling board.  

She is wife to a chaplain and mother of two girls, ages 9 and 6. Her blog is found at www.xanga.com/pattierwr.