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How to have a truly happy new year.

For the first time in years, I don’t remember my New Year’s resolution from January. Usually, I write it down in my journal or on a note I stick to my mirror. There’s been many of those dog-eared sticky notes from years past. The year of contentment. Speaking life. We passed pancakes across the breakfast table on January 1st this year. “What do you want from 2018?” I can’t remember my answer. I know what I didn’t want though. I didn’t want to walk into her office and share the parts of my life I’m inclined to hide. I didn’t want to Facetime her the day after she delivered her baby that never breathed. I didn’t want to spend four months wondering how I’d walk into her house on Christmas day and see her empty chair. I didn’t want to go on another first date that led nowhere. We sit across from each other in a little coffee shop in Colorado, picking at a charcuterie board. “When I think about all of the things I have left to go through,” her voice cracks....
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Golden Obedience

I walk into the living room and she runs to me and wraps tiny arms around my waist.
“Hey,” I play with her hair, “it was good to see you last weekend.”
“Was that only last weekend?” She looks up at me. “It seems like a year ago!”

I remember being that high off the ground and thinking the summer was long, long, long. I remember running around my parent’s farm with wild enthusiasm, catching butterflies and dueling with wooden swords. As I get taller, the summer gets shorter along with my enthusiasm.

In fact, summer always dries me out of words. When I live too fast, I miss things. I miss long talks with our feet hanging over the edge of the pool, laughing over a sticky cinnamon bun, dashing through a rainstorm. Everything blurs onto a single canvas. Impressionism fades the lines. Halfway through summer, I wake up with no purpose. I go to work for the money only. I play for the adrenaline rush only. I talk to friends for my own encouragement. I wonder how many days I have wasted with my eyes fixed on survival.

I go to work popping cough candies in my mouth to soothe my itchy throat and realize I have a choice. I can waste the whole day, whispering complaints; I can perform every task sluggishly so that it all turns out to be charred straw. Or, I can laugh with Jaimie, smile at Casey and act like everything is made of gold.

1 Corinthians 3:11-13
“For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.” 

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