A Toast to Tweaks

Who doesn’t love the anticipation that a new possibility holds? New Year’s can be like that for some people. It’s a spanking new calendar year, a fresh start. As Anne of Green Gables says, “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” Marilla is quick to set her straight though, “I’ll warrant you’ll make plenty in it.”

It can feel rather like we must all have perfectly curated lists of New Year’s resolutions, ways we will become a better version of ourselves. This can range from personal goals like learning a new skill to family goals like less screen time to professional goals like meeting deadlines more punctually.

I am not against resolutions. In fact, we are told,

It is unlikely

we will arrive at competence or improvement if we do not purposefully seek to pursue the objective. But the second part of the verse, which gets less attention, is also important. “[B]ut happy is the one who keeps the Law.” This idea of keeping God’s law suggests that our vision needs to be tailored not to any personal goal that may be trendy, in line with our friend group, etc. but that our vision needs to be something that directly follows God’s instructions for righteous living. Some versions translate “vision” to mean “revelation,” (NIV, CSB, NJKV) or “divine guidance” (NLT).

In some ways,

it would be so nice to have a blueprint for how God’s law fits into my daily homemaking. All the myriad of little decisions like whether we should invest in GMO free food and how much outdoor time each day we should encourage seem pretty far off the beaten path from any divine guidance the Scripture offers us on parenting.  However, when we seek to align our lives in the big ways of living an upright life for God’s glory, he will give us wisdom and grace for the myriad of little decisions where our own passions, preferences, and eccentricities come into play.

In thinking about resolutions and resolves, I know I have been charged with tending to my family to the best of my ability. From there, I try to think about little tweaks rather than drastically new paradigms. For example, we eat a LOT of popcorn at my house. All six of us love it. I have also come across enough suggesting that the liner in the microwavable bag is unhealthy to feel less than great about continuing to use said bags. I would never mandate that others must switch from these bags, but again, we eat a lot of popcorn, and I can’t claim ignorance.

As Maya Angelou said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

So, I played around with a few different options: first trying to create my own microwavable bags using lunch size brown paper bags and using a little olive oil, which ended being an oily mess, before I came across a microwavable glass container made to pop individual sized portions of popcorn with a dollop of butter and salt. For family portion sizes, we now use an air popper. The thing is, this change didn’t happen at New Year’s, and it was far from drastic, but it got the needle moving in a direction I felt better about in terms of recognizing that our bodies are a temple (1 Corinthians 6:19), and I probably shouldn’t be feeding my kids something I feel guilty about.

I think the reason

so many people fall off the band wagon of their resolves, whether they are made at New Year’s or some other time, is that they try to reinvent themselves rather than recognize what is already true about themselves. I would like to move my body more this new calendar year; I’ve gotten rather lax in that area. But if I were to try to make myself go to the gym before I teach my first morning class, I’d basically be setting myself up for failure. I do not at all like the idea of showering in a communal place on campus or even if I don’t get that sweaty, dealing with all logistics of working out before work. But I already have a yoga mat at home, already know I like doing workouts with the Youtube app that is already synced to our downstairs tv, and can pretty easily resolve to work out more from home in the evenings and on weekends. It’s not as dramatic as the gym pictures some post of their New Year’s resolutions, but it fits with what I already know about myself.

The same can be true at work.

One thing I know about myself is that I need to have variety and challenge to keep myself engaged. So, I switch up the readings in my classes often to keep myself on the lookout for meaningful connections and to remind myself what it’s like to engage with a new piece of literature. (Every once in a while I will purposefully read a new book along with my students rather than reading it ahead of time so we can share in the experience of a cold read and the joys and challenges that provides.) If you want to switch things up and challenge yourself this New Year at the office (or wherever you may go), instead of imagining a new version of yourself, maybe think about what you already know about yourself and what you can do to capitalize on that. If you are stimulated by a beautiful surrounding, maybe take some time to clean off that desk and add a small plant. If you know you thrive on interaction with others, maybe try to schedule eating with others as least once week rather than always working through lunch. Perhaps resolutions should be less about trying to reinvent the wheel and more about embracing the strengths or proclivities we already know ourselves to have or be capable of.

I love how the Lord often sees

what is already inherent within us and refines that. He saw the leadership skills within Joseph and Daniel (from the Old Testament) and used those to cause them to rise to places of prominence in the foreign kingdoms they lived in. Jesus told Peter (the apostle) that he would no longer be a fisher of fish but a fisher of men. He changed the goal but kept something of what was already familiar. So, as we embark into 2025, let’s remember we don’t need to have huge plans and 160 degree redirects to implement. We can evaluate what is working and how that can be tweaked to work even better. We can consider what brings life and joy to us and our families and try to burnish the gold that has already been peeking through.