My New Year’s resolutions
This is Part II to this post from last week where I wrote about the things I felt called to reflect on as I write my yearly list of resolutions.
I walked into Adoration about a week ago with a typically detailed list of what I wanted to accomplish in the New Year. As I said in my previous post, I walked out of the Adoration chapel with a completely different list. I felt a strong call to set aside a lot of the things I wanted to include, and commit to three resolutions alone. Here’s the list:
1. Every night before I go to bed, I will ask myself three questions about the next day (and give detailed, specific answers):
- “When will I pray?”
- “What will I eat?”
- “What are the essential things I need to accomplish tomorrow?”
It should only take about 30 seconds…yet I’ve been trying to do it over the past few days and have found it to be surprisingly hard to force myself to focus long enough to provide thorough answers to each question. Trying to implement this simple resolution makes me realize just how much I have a tendency to drift aimlessly through my days (as I mentioned in my previous post).
2. Through research and prayer I will come up with a plan to help me eat only foods that nourish me both physically and spiritually, and I’ll be obedient to that plan. There’s way too much to say about this resolution to cover in this post; I’ll go into it much more in the weeks to come. It has to do with what I’ve already written about focusing on the way food is impacting me both spiritually and physically, and detaching myself from foods that are not only unhealthy but come between my relationship with God and others.
3. I will plan to do “mini New Year” resolutions throughout the year. Once a year isn’t enough for me to take a big step back and look at where I am compared to where I need to be. I need to schedule a couple days throughout the year that I will treat like I treat New Year’s: days of reflection and renewal where I resolve to make changes I need to make. I’ve chosen the feast days of Easter (April 12 this year) and the Assumption (August 15) as my “mini New Year” days. I chose feast days as opposed to arbitrary calendar dates since they’re times of prayer, inspiration and celebration throughout the Church anyway.
So that’s my list! It’s helpful to share it with others so I’m not tempted to backtrack on what I’ve committed to. 
If anyone else would like to share their list, I’d love to hear it!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Best Blog Posts I Read in 2008
After my 8 Things I Learned in 2008 post, I couldn’t resist ending the year with one more list! This is absolutely not a comprehensive list of every great post or article that I read, just some highlights, with an emphasis on links that didn’t get around much so some people may have missed. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did! (Those of you who have been following my links blog all year will have seen most of these.)
- By far the best post I read this year was the Raving Atheist’s Christmas post. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with his site, for a long time he was one of the biggest atheist bloggers on the web.)
- Barbara Curtis’ series of posts about her 90+ pound weight loss (and learning to let go of the entitlement mentality) have had a huge influence on me as I think about my own relationship to food. Some particularly good posts: Diet Update; More Diet Discussion; and When Your Spouse is Overweight. I look forward to joining her in the new Google group she just created.
- This article about the concept of creating a domestic monastery really inspired me throughout the year.
- Serial killer Ted Bundy’s last interview, with a focus on how pornography impacted his life, is one of the most chilling, fascinating things I read this year.
- This post about when feminists become mothers, along with its fascinating look at the idea that autonomy is the most important goal for a person to seek, has kept me thinking throughout the year.
- I gained so much wisdom from reading The Philosopher Mom’s series of short posts about Teresa of Avila’s spiritual classic The Interior Mansions. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with the work, St. Teresa describes spiritual growth through the analogy of the soul being like a castle with God at the very center.)
- Throughout the year I have often thought of the beautiful words in this post where a mom describes the love she’s experienced with each of her adopted children, some of them who came from difficult backgrounds: “Love is what life is about.”
- [Deleted - turns out the story the article referred to was not true.]
- I’ve referred to The Cynical Christian’s post about God and objective good many times throughout the year for his clear articulation of the important point that “when we say ‘God is good,’ we’re not describing what God is, we’re describing what good is–good is God.”
- Scribbit’s post about children and extracurricular activities gave me a lot of food for thought (and a much-needed reality check) as my own children get to the age where they will have more options for groups, lessons, sports and other activities.
- J.R.R. Tolkien’s words about the Eucharist have strengthened and inspired me many times throughout the year.
- This interview with Peter Kreeft was fascinating. I especially liked his answer about the biggest obstacle facing orthodox Christianity.
- Matthew Archbold’s post about how he went from a career-obsessed newspaperman to a stay-at-home dad is touching and well worth reading.
- I often think of Finslippy’s post about art and fear when I struggle with the writing process, particularly the fascinating example she shares of an experiment with a ceramics class (it’s right under the video).
Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone!
Just a reminder…
That we’re back on for 7 Quick Takes on Friday!
8 Things I Learned in 2008
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been reflecting on what I learned in 2008, and considering how I can continue to grow from these lessons in the New Year. I thought I’d share my list in case anyone’s interested.
1. If my goal is to have a God-centered, peaceful life, I cannot do nearly as much as I thought I could.
This was my first lesson of 2008, and one that I’ve realized I’ll have to remind myself of over and over again as I battle my lifelong tendency to put too much on my plate. As I detailed in the posts below, it all started with looking at Mother Teresa’s religious order’s daily schedule; I was struck by its simplicity and focus, and the way it revolved around prayer and allowed ample time for rest…yet they are still able to have a huge impact on the world.
Posts on this subject:
2. Life is easier when my days revolve around prayer.
In January of 2008 I decided to do a “reckless experiment with prayer”: despite all the good, logical reasons I had not to spend too much time in prayer (namely the fact that I was unbelievably busy with a three-year-old, one-year-old and newborn, all in diapers), I decided to try an entire week of putting prayer first. For one week, observing the prayer times of the Liturgy of the Hours would be the first and most important thing on every day’s to-do list, and everything else would come second. I’d try it just to see what happened.
I half expected that my house would degenerate into chaos and my little prayer experiment would somehow end with the Health Department’s involvement, but just the opposite happened: I actually got more done despite the fact that I was spending much more time in prayer than I had been, and a peace and serenity entered my house that were not there before. I’ve kept up with this practice ever since. (Though it did suffer a bit during my recent spiritual dry spell, it’s something I plan to recommit to in 2009.)
Posts on this subject:
- A reckless experiment with prayer
- A reckless experiment with prayer: The Plan
- Focus and procrastination
- I wrote a lot on this topic throughout the year — click here to see a list of all posts in the series
3. It’s harder for me to trust God with small stuff than with big stuff.
In 2007 I learned a lot about trusting God with my life, and when 2008 rolled around I felt like I was actually pretty good about turning my anxieties over to God…and then I started having computer problems. In the desk-pounding, near-computer-throwing, profanity-muttering series of hissy fits that ensued, I realized that while I might have reached a fair level of spiritual maturity about trusting God with things like our long-term finances, I had basically zero trust in the Lord when it came to little details like getting stuck in traffic or having technical problems with a website. It’s still something I’m working on, and I find it to be one of my greatest spiritual challenges.
Posts on this subject:
4. Fear is the absence of love.
When my spiritual director first counseled me that “fear is the absence of love,” I wasn’t sure what she meant. I’d been talking about my worries about the new pregnancy, medical issues, finances, education choices for the kids, etc. — what on earth did that have to do with love? She simply suggested that I meditate on that thought and, every time I experienced fear, ask myself how I could pour love into the situation (or, if I couldn’t see a way, do some act of love unrelated to the situation). At the time I had no idea what a huge lesson this would be for me. Hardly a day has gone by that I have not thought of this lesson, and I have yet to find a problem that, after praying about it, I don’t see a clear way that I can pour love into the situation — and, sure enough, it helps every time.
Post on this subject:
5. Answered prayers are easier to see when looking at the world through a lens of love and humility.
When I first started praying, I expected my prayers to be answered in a vacuum; in other words, I expected the help or information that I needed to just fall out of the sky and into my lap. What I’ve found over and over again, however, is that God often answers prayers in a way that draws us closer to one another, and if I’m looking at the world from a self-centered, controlling, isolationist point of view, I might miss the fact that God has actually answered my prayer through the imperfect efforts of another human being.
Posts on this subject:
- The story of a friendship
- Looking at the world through a lens of love
- Do I let others help me?
- A lesson about accepting (imperfect) help
6. I did not lose my own life when I embraced the idea that my primary vocation is to be a wife and a mother; in fact, I found it.
Coming from a completely secular background, I found this to be one of the more counterintuitive, profound bits of wisdom in Christianity.
Posts on this subject:
- Putting our lives on hold
- Getting my life back
- Dying to self
- “It’s not what you do, it’s whom you serve“
7. Christianity is the fulfillment of the atheistic beliefs I was raised with.
As I’ve grown in my newfound faith I continue to be surprised that it feels oddly comfortable in many ways. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my new belief system is not a complete departure from my old one; rather, it’s the fulfillment of it.
Posts on this subject:
8. There are ways you can structure your lifestyle to make it more conducive to holiness.
I’ve written about this recently and I’m sure I’ll continue to write about it a lot in 2009. My spiritual director’s gentle admonishment to work on getting my exhaustion under control before I attempt my specifically spiritual goals (detailed in the first post below) was a real eye-opening moment that has had a far-reaching impact on the way I approach growing in holiness.
Posts on this subject:
It’s been fun to look back at all these great lessons from 2008 and think about them as a new year begins. What did you learn in 2008?
