Happy New Year!
It’s that time where you hear about everyone’s resolutions and plans for the year whether you want to or not. Good intentions to change unhealthy habits into healthy ones, to grow in a certain aspect of character or to make some sort of positive change overall.
Me personally? I hate resolutions. Always have. Make goals. Do it for a couple months. Start hating and resenting them. Quit. Feel like a failure. Nope not for me. I have no problems with already seeing every place where I miss the mark already I don’t need the extra stress.
In recent years, however, choosing a word or mantra for the year has also become popular. Words like joy, peace, kind, focus, simplify are chosen to remind the person of their goal to grow in a specific way over the year. This is a practice I could get behind and have actually done so for about nine years. I usually enjoy finding just the right word for the year and then pairing it with a scripture to take it deeper. That is, until this year. After so much trauma and long-suffering I have struggled to find anything I want to grow in. Just being honest here. I know it is a rarity. The thought of focusing on anything other than enduring the hardships this new year will bring, while still clenching on to hope and moments of joy, is just overwhelming and exhausting.
So here’s the conclusion I have come up with. You ready for this?
You don’t always have to grow! Yep I said it. It’s out there. I’m awaiting the backlash… None, hmmm? Maybe I’m not the only one that feels relieved by this truth being said out loud.
I used to tell myself “if you’re not growing, you’re dying.” You should see my face as I typed that. Clenched teeth, you know the emoji. I believed it whole heartedly. To my shame I even told other people this when they were staying stagnant. Now I will say this philosophy isn’t inherently wrong or bad when applied with experience and wisdom. When someone becomes trapped in a place of survival, unable to get out, this is when it becomes unhealthy and the truth is they will start deteriorating. You can only live in survival mode for so long before your mind and body start shutting down. As medical parents we often recede back into survival mode at different points and for various lengths of time, but we do not live there. There are a few other scenarios, but I have digressed enough.
Back to the topic at hand. Growth.
There is a reason songs and literature refer to seasons of growth, planting, watering and harvesting. If we focused on growing things all the time there wouldn’t be space for anything else. Same with us as human beings. If we focus solely on growing we will miss important lessons that growth brings with it. We will also neglect rest which is of vital importance to replenishment.
So this year I have made the decision to simply live. Whatever I learn along the way will be taken in, but it will not be my focus. I am resigning the notion of always needing to be better and allowing myself to just be. In doing so I am also giving myself permission to do what needs to be done and taking into my soul that this is enough. It is enough to take care of the necessary things without feeling guilty about all the things I could have done, because there are always things that could be done.
