Have a Fresh Start this New Year
Do you want a fresh start this new year? Whether it’s a new school year, new year of life or marriage, or January 1, we all love a crisp, fresh start. For me, nothing stirs up nostalgia more than remembering the cool fall mornings in Illinois, walking to school with new notebooks and sharp pencils, smelling the briskness of winter’s promises whispering to me on the early morning breeze while summer’s heat lingered. Those blank notebooks, new shoes, freshly sharpened pencils, organized folders and planners symbolized hope. Likewise, January 1 always signifies a fresh chance to be new. Most of start each year hoping to be better in some area of our lives. I know I do. But somehow despite my determination, I always find myself in a lot of familiar places despite my determination to have a fresh start each new year. Because the kind of year I have is not entirely up to me. Life happens. We live in a fallen world with illness and sin. The choices of others affect us. God has plans for us and our lives that are often outside of our control. Having a fresh start can’t mean expecting all good things for the future. It can’t be a prosperity gospel message. Messages like that leave us disappointed and discouraged. God never promised us an easy life. He promised help to live it. Halfway through this year, I dislocated my hip, twice. I had urgent surgery to repair it, but found terrible damage to my hip abductor muscles; my recovery was going to be 12 weeks of nearly bedrest. While I have tried to face this with peace and grace, this is not how I saw 2019 going. I definitely had times I wanted to pitch a fit. Why was I going through this AGAIN!?! My life is forever changed. I will never ski or roller skate or ride a horse ever again. I’m still grappling with the ways this has limited me. I won’t be able to control how the rest of my life goes. My body may get stronger than it is now, but it will never be 25 years old again. I will never be the athletic and active mom I imagined I would be. Only so much is under my control. But the last 12 weeks have really opened my eyes. And I can choose to be bitter or blessed. Proverbs 17:22 ESV “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” My fresh start this new year isn’t about resolutions, it’s about attitude. “I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes.” – Charles Swindoll The last six years of my life have been full of difficult surgeries and excruciating hip dislocations with long recoveries. I couldn’t control any of it. But I could choose my attitude in it all. I could seek to be filled with joy and love while trusting God even when I could not see the good in those moments. I pray I was an example of Christ’s love as much as possible even in the most painful and emotional moments. As Christians, how we react to the hardest things speaks to the trust we have in our Lord. We are supposed to believe that God is sovereign and that nothing in our lives is wasted. I want to spend the coming year focusing on my attitude. I know God has worked on my heart immensely, and I’ve grown tremendously through the trials of this year. Ephesians 4:23 ESV “And to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,” Having an attitude that trusts God, stays peaceful, radiates light and joy is the way I want to walk through this new year. It’s not easy when I can barely hobble around my house, but I’ve seen AGAIN how God used this recovery to help me focus on being still as a mom. I have seen my daughter blossom in our staying home. We’ve built a better relationship when we didn’t have to be rushed. We are closer than ever. I know we can’t stay home forever, but God interrupted my life for a purpose, and I’ve become a better mother in it. Doing too much, I was inviting too much chaos into my heart and mind with stretching myself too thin. Even good things aren’t always God thing for us. I had to learn, again, to be quiet and just focus on the next right thing for each day, even if that was just teaching division with patience and learning to let people help me. I’m excited to start being able to put weight on my leg and walking again. But I’m not in any rush to go back to trying to do so much (even too much for ministry) that I miss WHO God wants me to be. I want to spend this coming year diving deeply into God’s word. I want to continue to cultivate an attitude of grace, peace, and gentleness towards others, especially my family. Galatians 5:22-23 ESV “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” We are to expect trials and struggles and face them with joy, because the testing of our faith produces endurance. My fresh start this new year is to have a serene attitude as much as possible, continuing to learn to trust God more deeply in the days to come. Because the only thing I know for certain about the future is that it will have difficult moments. I will have hard days. We will face challenging circumstances. Cultivating an attitude of joy and peace progressively each day is the only way to prepare for the times I will most need it. My fresh start this new year won’t be a simple resolution, but will change the lives of all around me if I have a new attitude.
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