It's A Love Hate Relationship

It's true. I have a love hate relationship with the New Year. On one hand, it offers an amazing opportunity to evaluate my life, to take inventory of the good, nurturing those parts, while analyzing the bad, attempting to eliminate the things which do me harm both physically and spiritually. The proverbial other hand, however, holds the part of the New Year which has plagued me for many years. It's this part that reminds me that so much of the bad that I have attempted to eliminate in the past still stares me in the face.

I gave up on New Year's resolutions long ago. Anybody with me?  Years ago, I would spend hours internalizing perfectly worded statements of new year intentions. Every part of me expected the changing of the calendar to be the recipe for newness; so long grumpy, sarcastic, procrastinating Tonya. Any set back spelled failure and while I tell Axl on a daily basis to never give up I am a classic quitter (Sorry, transparency is not always pretty).  So I resolve to make no resolutions. Yet I cannot escape the temptation to evaluate and look to the hopes of the year ahead. The process this year has been less ummm shall we say... depressing. This year is screaming, "Growth!" Not "Change!" Obviously, with growth comes change, but growth is a process made up of small, gradual changes. I'm not looking to be a new me in a day. I'm solely seeking to continue the process that Jesus began in me when He sealed my fate and made me His own.

Growth is a choice. I can hear countless sermons, read endless devotions, and sing a thousand worship songs and never grow out of myself. This day I am choosing to continue to seek after Jesus, to have more and more of Him and less and less of me. I am choosing to accept that I will fail, and I am choosing now to accept the strength He will give me to begin again. I am choosing to ground myself in the Word of the Father, arming myself against defeat. Today, I am choosing to live as a forgiven, broken, but on the mend, child of the one true eternal God. I am making this choice for today, praying that tomorrow my choice will be the same.

Verses that are guiding me today:

Phillipians 3:12-14 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.


Proverbs 15:1 A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh answer stirs up anger.


James 1:18-20 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, because anger does not breed the righteousness that God desires.


You may want to check out "The Choice," a poem by Max Lucado. http://www.maxlucado.com/static/email_archive/2010/06.20.html


With Much Love,


Tonya