Instead of new years resolutions, in 2019 I’m going to be looking for new year’s revelations.

I don’t like goals. They stress me out. Resolutions seem like let-downs waiting to happen. Maybe one day I’ll be friends with goal-setting, but today is not that day. And this coming year is not that year.

In the summer, I felt like God was encouraging me to focus on what is there, not what is missing. I’ve spent so much of my life looking at the gaps and the holes, the places where I’m not living up to expectations (my own or others’). I would look at how I needed to change and where I needed to grow. It’s pretty stressful always living in that emptiness. God’s suggestion was pretty radical for me. I started looking at what was good in my life. What do I do well? What was a great moment from today? What am I proud of? What am I already doing? The shift was a breath of fresh air. Instead of looking at all of holes in my garden beds of life, I started looking at the plants that were already there, and I was astonished by how beautiful they are. It gave me hope. The empty spaces just made me stressed.

I’ll be taking this attitude of looking at what’s already there into the new year. And as 2019 goes on, I hope to stumble across all sorts of amazing new years revelations.

(And I’ll probably write some of them here. No promises though!)