It’s the middle of the year!

Stock-take time. End of financial year. For those in the Northern Hemisphere it’s drawing to the end of the school year. For those down south, like me in Australia, we have just begun our Winter break. Yesterday I worked on completing my paperwork in preparation for the new financial year. It feels like a milestone, like it might be time to make new year’s resolutions – or to stock-take what has happened with those made in January.

Sometimes it feels a bit much…

I wonder how your New Year’s Resolutions have gone? At this six month mark have you been meeting the goals set at the beginning of the year? Or has life swung way off course again and your aspirations sidelined?
One of my unwritten resolutions for this year was to become less busy. So far I haven’t achieved success in this area. Another resolution was to live more simply. Again, I don’t think I can clock up many brownie points in that department.

Does it mean, if we are failing miserably with our resolutions that they were not worth making? I don’t think so . Instead, I propose that we take this stock-taking opportunity, pull out our resolutions (if we wrote them down) and take another look. Here are some questions that can be useful as we do this:

• Why were these resolutions considered important in January? Are these reasons still relevant now?
• Which two, or three, of January resolutions are most important to you? Which ones compliment or enable God’s calling on your life?
• Can these resolutions be redefined into more manageable parts?
  (For example if my resolution is to become less busy, how exactly can I support this happening? Do I need to set guidelines for non family commitments? Do I need to block out days on my calendar for rest and relaxation? etc)
• Are there any resolutions that you can gracefully give yourself permission NOT to fulfill? Either because they are no longer relevant, or because they are not Kingdom priorities?
• Can you celebrate growth and success with any of your January resolutions? (And to me, this includes being able to let some of them go, if they are no longer necessary.)

Prayerfully take your New Year’s ambitions to our Heavenly Father and lay them before him. He knows the plans he has for us – despite our best intended resolutions. He also knows our hearts, and the complexity of our lives, even better than we do.

I wonder what the results of your mid-year resolution stock-take might be…

Penny