Bah Humbug on New Year’s Resolutions

I gave up New Year’s resolutions decades ago. January ambitions would inevitably lead to February failures. It was like playing a game I could never win. There was no fun in that. In a small lunch gathering one early January day several years ago, a friend tried to force me to take my turn at sharing a resolution, even after I had explained I don’t do them. With as much grace as I could muster, I refused to play.

I do not think less of anyone who chooses to make New Year’s resolutions. It’s just one of those things that bug me personally. Resolution “stresses firm determination to achieve one’s ends” (Merriam-Webster). That can be a good thing. But the items I would come up with simply because a new calendar appears on my kitchen wall would not carry that degree of determination. Also, Merriam-Webster defines a New Year’s resolution as “a promise to do something differently in the new year.” For me, promises don’t spring from a numbered square on a calendar.

However, January 1 is an ideal time to reflect back over the past year and look ahead to the future. Therefore, I am not opposed to setting goals—as long as they don’t move in with suitcases of guilt and trunks of despair. For the past four years, I have kept a written list of things I want to accomplish during the year. I got the idea from a friend’s website.

At the end of 2016, Joan posted a spreadsheet of her year’s goals.  I liked her organization. The 50-plus items were divided into color-coded categories. And they were measurable and obtainable, which any teacher knows is a must. In a second column, she noted her achievements—or the lack thereof. There were quite a few of the latter, but the list also displayed many accomplishments showing the year to be a success.

My list does not have that many items (she is way more active than I will ever be), and it is not as sophisticated. I write my goals on a sheet of copy paper, yet to find a spreadsheet home. Perhaps if I made that one of my goals it would happen, but it’s no guarantee. I had three other spreadsheets in my organizing category for 2020 and none of them made it from paper scraps to computer.

I don’t hold my goals with a death grip; that would make me crazy. For three years, the only progress my goal to “clean the attic” made was to skip forward to the following year’s list. And that was not the only one I had to bump into the future untouched. But I try to rejoice in my successes rather than crumble under my failures.

Besides preserving my sanity, another reason I hold the goals loosely is to not miss new opportunities God brings along. I didn’t have a goal of starting a website last year; God sprung that one on me several months in. I chose to follow Him (always a good idea), which put the huge cleaning project I had started on hold. And I was okay with that. At least I had partially accomplished my goal. Definitely progress over the prior three years.

But there’s more to that story. I was able to get back to the cleaning near the end of the year. On December 30, our garbage collector carted enough bags away from our house to put me over my 2020 goal. That was a really sweet victory. The project still has a long way to go, but this year it will continue as a 2021 goal, not a leftover 2017 goal.

I often have more failures than successes, though. I can string quite a few messed up days together. They may simply be from unaccomplished goals. Or they may be from more serious failures like not being the person I want to be, or the person God wants me to be. But I have learned to leave yesterday behind and start new each day. These words written by Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:21-23 help me to do that.

21Yet this I call to mind
          And therefore I have hope.
22Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed,
          For his compassions never fail.
23They are new every morning;
          Great is your faithfulness.

Another translation of these verses was put to music. I learned the song in college, and it has stuck with me like a faithful friend. It flows from my grateful heart on those mornings after my less stellar days.

God’s compassion for us cannot be exhausted. We can’t pile up enough failures to exceed His unending mercy. Imagine this: Every morning when you wake up, there is a dark, ugly, smelly mound of everything that didn’t go right yesterday in the corner of your bedroom. In another spot are beautifully wrapped packages stacked to the ceiling, all filled with mercy. You can spend the day rummaging through your pile of failures and go nowhere. Or you can open your gifts and carry them with you into a fresh day. From experience, I know that the latter is much more productive—and enjoyable.

Our timeless God, Who has no need for time Himself, has graciously given us a structure of years and months and weeks and days so we constantly have opportunities to start over. We don’t have to wait for a date on the calendar in order to begin something new or to restart something we’ve tried 157 times before. Today is always a great time to do that.

So I’ll pass on those New Year’s resolutions and stick to my goals that guide me but don’t bind me. I’ll bequeath my failures to yesterday and, instead, embrace God’s new mercies today—no matter what the calendar says.