Second Chance

Often God wakes me up in the middle of the night with a word, an idea, or a thought.  So yesterday when He had me thinking about New Year's Resolutions and then woke me up early this morning with it again, I stumbled over my red and green Rubbermaid storage boxes (that are begging to be put back up in the attic) into the living room and opened up my computer to write a bit about it.  

My sweet friend, Shannon Holmes, wrote this post two years ago about struggling to keep resolutions on January 1st each year.  She gets me.  That's why we're friends.

All over my social media are posts and blogs and stories about things people are going to change on January 1st.  And it is inspiring!  What a great opportunity to reset our minds about our health, our spiritual life, our habits, and the list goes on.

I love the idea of being intentional about a discipline that will impact my life or my world in a positive way.  But there is something else that threatens to steal the excitement of change for the better... 

Pressure.

Remember that God never required us in His Word to make a positive change on January 1st and keep it for 365 days without fail.  Not that it wouldn't be a great accomplishment and something we should strive for!  Each morning without fail we begin to see a dark sky change ever so slightly.  Black is replaced by a dark blue haze and then a tiny glow can be seen across the eastern horizon.  As the light spreads our world is illuminated by the light of the Son, and we are reminded of our second chance.

The view from my back deck this morning around 7am!

And that happens every 24 hours.

New Year's Resolutions are great when our lives are gliding along smoothly, but when bumps are found in the road (and they are sure to come), the commitments we made on January 1st can get lost in tragedy or just simply a tired and worn-out spirit. 

And that's when I'm glad to have my second chance every morning instead of having to wait for another big New Year's milestone to come around.  God cares too much about us to make us wait that long! 

My mind is sometimes overcome with so much pressure about making a big change on January 1st and not stumbling for a whole year that I decide not to even try.  The good news is that if we fail we don't have to wait until January 1st to fix it.  God has given us a reminder of His steadfast Love each morning when His grace and mercies are new and available to us again.  

The steadfast Love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; They are new EVERY MORNING; Great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23

Resolutions

I am one of those people who put their Christmas tree up right after Halloween.  I mean, Thanksgiving is great and all, but this girl has food issues, so Thanksgiving really just stresses me out!  I want to go straight into Christmas and the magic of it all.  I love sitting in my living room with just the soft glow of the lights.  Now, since I put my tree up so early, come Christmas morning, and all the presents have been opened, Santa has come and gone, and we have finally picked up all the trash, it is now time to take the tree down.  Christmas is over people!  Let’s get it packed up and back in the closet, Momma is DONE.  After I get everything put away, I do start to feel a little sad, my soft little twinkling lights are gone, and the living room seems so bare.  Then I have to think, wait a minute, this is a clean slate.  There is a New Year coming, and a New Year means RESOLUTIONS! 

            I LOVE the idea of resolutions, for about one hot minute.  I start to think oh, I want to eat clean, I want to exercise for longer than two months, I want to be more patient, I want to finish my Bible study in a timely manner (I can easily turn a 6 week Bible study into a 6 month one), I want to read more.  I make ALL THESE GRAND PLANS, I play it up so big in my head, BUT the closer it gets to the first Monday in January, (because ALL life changes must begin on a Monday), I start to rethink every single resolution, however, this year, I do have one I really want to try hard to keep.  I want to read 52 books this year, so I want to share with you a few books that I am reading, and a couple that are my absolute most favorites.

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman

Forget the miniseries, I watched the first five minutes and it was so different from the book, I turned it off and deleted it off of my DVR.  This is THE.BEST.BOOK I have ever read.  It is based on the ancient historian Josephus recorded account of the Roman siege of the Jewish settlement of Masada, where two women and five children survive.  The story’s focus is four strong and courageous women, and how their lives brought them to Masada.

Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes by Denise Grover Swank

This was a free Kindle book, so needing something to read, I decided to download it.  There are eight books currently in this series, and it is such a fun read, I finished all eight in just a couple of weeks.  This is the type of book that had me laughing out loud and staying up way past my bedtime to read one more chapter. 

Girl at the End of the World: My Escape from Fundamentalism in Search of Faith with a Future by Elizabeth Esther

This book kept popping up on people’s reading list, so I decided to give it a try.  The book is an account of Elizabeth’s life growing up in a fundamentalist Christian church.  This book brings with it an entire array of emotions, be ready to have your heartbreak for her, and then you will find yourself laughing, but it is a book that you will find yourself thinking about for days.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

I have not read this one yet, but Goodreads keeps telling me I am going to love it.  I LOVED Gone Girl, and this book promises to deliver a great suspense too.

A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” by Rachel Held Evans

I have not read this one either.  It popped up after I finished reading Girl at the End of the World, and after reading the summary, I was highly curious.  Rachel Held Evans decides to take a year and live the biblical definition of womanhood. 

These are just a few of my favorites, and what I am getting ready to read.  What do I need to add to my list, I have forty-eight more to go before the end of the year, and I am always looking for suggestions? What are some of your resolutions, or do you even bother? 

Shannon