Resolutions I'm too scared to make

and not nearly brave enough to keep

I don’t do resolutions, really. They feel too much like reckoning, which I looked up to make sure it hits the spot.

reck·on·ing /ˈrek(ə)niNG/ noun

1. the action or process of calculating or estimating something.

   As in, "last year was not, by any reckoning, a particularly good one.” (That’s the dictionary’s sentence, not mine.)

Estimating how things have gone and how they could go better? That feels a lot like math to me. And, as my fifth-grade daughter can tell you, “Mom doesn’t really do math.” (Ahem, I can “do” math just fine… once I’ve had a minute to Google a refresher on when to carry the ones and all that.)

But I have learned in recent years that resolving about the future is futile unless I have first taken a beat to reflect (with paper and pen) on the past. Mental math about the past year? That’s nearly impossible for me. Unless I’ve written down what’s been, I tend to reinvent it in my head.

Depending on my mood, I will only remember the hard bits and gloss right over the wins. Or maybe I, like the Christmas cards and social media squares you scroll past, will only focus on the highlights, forgetting all the gritty parts that paved the way between.

But when I sit down with a journal or two and the squares of the photos on my own phone, I can better remember both. I can recall the tension between the good and the hard and keep holding it. “What do I do with the ups and downs of this life of love you have called us to?” I wrote in my journal on Jan. 22, 2024, in the midst of a stretch of weeks with high highs and low lows.

Perhaps I do have the courage to reckon with the past, to look in the face of what’s been and remind myself why some resolutions give way to reality. But do I have the courage to own what I actually can change about the future? Eesh, I honestly don’t know.

If I did—if I really did—perhaps I would make resolutions less like “I will try to get up before the kids” and more like the following (And, lest you be overly convicted, a reminder: These are the ones I don’t think I’m brave enough to keep, and hoping my husband and kids don’t see right away):

• I won’t spend money on anything I can’t justify to my kids.

  • Think about having to explain exactly why you want that thing in your cart… now think about explaining it to an inquisitive 10-year-old who is inconveniently convicted about sneaking snacks into movie theaters and will most likely say something like, “But Mom, you already have jeans, and some people don’t have any.” What’s harder than saying, “I would like to practice moderation in 2025?” Having to justify not doing so.

• I will not grumble about the tasks that “should” belong to someone else. Instead, I will ask myself, “What does this really cost me?”

  • That question first came from A Praying Life by Paul Miller and it’s a doozy. What if I did “his job” again… and then again next week… and what if I didn’t say anything? Would the sky fall down? Or would I perhaps learn to grow a little in the sort of love that I know deep down brings far more change (in me first, and maybe even in others) than nagging ever could? Oof.

• I will look my kids in the eye when they talk to me (no matter how “urgent” the text message seems).

  • I really would like to keep this one, and I probably do some percentage of the time. But 100%? The texts, emails, message replies… they all really are urgent, right? Do I have the courage to ignore the people not in front of me—to ignore their false sense of urgency—so that I can stop ignoring the faces that are looking for mine in real time?

• I will kiss my husband when he comes home. Even if we have garbage breath and grumbling in our spirits. I will drop the onion in one hand and the knife in the other and greet him.

  • I work from home and am, therefore, in the position of greeting those who come home. I enjoy making dinner. And yet I often find this odd bitterness rising up in me the second my husband walks in the door. It’s not really namable; it just is. And if I let it fester, it can ruin the evening. But I don’t know if I truly believe that a better greeting would fix it, that pushing through the little tinge of bitterness would produce the beginnings of something sweet. What would it cost me to try though? A later dinner? A burned sauce? Or, worse yet, a dash of pride?

• I will not think about whether I can do the things I am setting out to do. I will not look to my right and left to compare and crumple in defeat before I’ve even begun.

  • As I type these resolutions, I hear the beginnings of a Beach Boys song in my head, “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could…” It would be so nice if I could snap my fingers and be rid of the comparison and self-doubt that often keeps me from beginning the very things I feel called to do on a given day.

Perhaps these resolutions, or the heart change that would cause me to take these actions more and more, is the sort that comes “only by prayer.” Perhaps my inability to accomplish any of them in my own strength is the ticket to what I really need, costly, daily, abiding dependence on a God who can accomplish in me what matters most.

Because the goal of this year—and of the entire Christian life—is not autonomous growth. It is, as Psalm 1 says, to be a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. A tree that resolves only to do the very thing it cannot survive without, to root and root more deeply into the life that sustains it.

Trees don’t uproot and walk around, trying to close the exercise rings on their apple watches. They slowly grow, one ring at a time, by abiding.

The regular realization that I’m not who I was meant to be, that I do the very things I do not want to do—this also can be a kind of ring of resolve within me. This can be the very circling back to the One who did every single thing He was sent to accomplish, somehow without even sighing. Where my resolve falters, his didn’t. He doesn’t.

So who will rescue me from my short-sighted resolutions? From all my failing and flailing into the New Year? Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord.