New Year's Resolutions

New Year'sresolutions

CLAIRE MUMMERT

New Year's resolutions always feel like a game that you know in advance you will fail. You make a list of promises you have almost no intention of keeping and then, surprise, you don't keep them. Now that I have three children, multiple jobs, and almost no time to myself, I have to be realistic. I think most people go on a sort of resolutions journey, and the first step seems to be “the word.”

My husband and I were sitting at a cozy breakfast, watching snow come down on the field outside, while on vacation in Vermont. We wanted this year to be different. We wanted our lives to be changed. We wanted the feeling we had in Vermont to pervade our day-to-day. I mean who doesn't go to Vermont on vacation and feel inspired to change your life? I get that way just watching White Christmas each year.

You decide to ditch your resolutions altogether and pick a word that will define your year. You spend weeks deciding on the perfect word, and you know that it is going to encompass your everything, changing you so that the montage of your year plays indie rock and has nights full of laughter and twinkle lights. Unfortunately, there is so much more to my life, and one word, while helpful, is not always an end all. I wind up Saturday at 2 p.m. wondering why this day has not been “grace” or “joy” or whatever my word is at the time.

My first attempt at making this stick was the closest I ever came to success, and even then, it was not all perfect.

So our words (because we could not decide on one) were “brave adventure.” We were parenting two kids we loved, in the process of adopting, and camping frequently. This was a truly great year. It was a year where we focused on building relationships even when it was hard, we got outside more than ever before, and difficulties were mitigated by seasons of beauty.

But it still wasn't perfect. Our youngest went through a patch where his word for the season was “destruction,” and homeschooling was not the tiptoe through the tulips I envisioned. I just kept telling myself that I was “brave” for sticking it out and that this was just another definition for “adventure.”

I am one of those people that likes to make lists and cross things off. I like the big picture and the details. So when the next year we chose “heal” because we had hit a rough patch, we were all of a sudden in June, and I was crying in the car because the year had not magically felt healing. I felt no different. Life was hard, marriage was hard, parenting was hard, and I was so tired of all of it. How had choosing “heal” and praying for it daily not changed anything at all? We tried over and over to pick a word only to find that the magic was lost on me.

So we changed. I think for some people regular resolutions are fine and for others they need a word or phrase or idea to help them focus. I need both. Starting the year before last, we decided to pick a word or phrase to help focus our thoughts and goals, but we also chose specific, achievable goals. We skipped the wishes for weight loss or the promises for weekly date nights because...well I did say they had to be achievable goals. No more shame and heartbreak when things inevitably don't work out, we had to really think about where to focus and what we could do to change. It would be easy to decide just to skip any kind of resolving all together, most families do. But there is something about a new year, a clean slate, that begs us to start fresh.

January's cold weather seems to cleanse the world — the air is cleaner, the bugs are gone, and there is an occasional band-aid of snow that makes everything look new. The whole Earth seems to reset and start fresh, so why shouldn't we? I think that when we miss the opportunity for resolutions, we miss a chance for intentional growth. We miss a chance to say, in the words of Jen Hatmaker, “You don't have to be who you once were."

Most recently, my word for the year was “less.” This does not sound like the optimal word for starting over and renewing, but for me it is exactly what I needed. I wanted less noise, less stress, less clutter, less everything. But also more. More relationships, more intentional downtime, more love, more calm, more space. I set out to make this year “less” of what it had been. Last year was one of difficulty. It began with us being matched with a little boy from another country and ended with us moving to a new house to find more racial mirrors for him. Everything in between was...chaos.

I needed less. After I decided what I wanted the focus to be, I set about making a list of how I would achieve it. First things first, we decided to go camping once a month. This was the biggest stretch for us, and I was worried I had made another unattainable goal. We gave ourselves the hottest months off, but the rest of the year we would camp. And goodness, we have done it. Because one thing that we have learned together over our marriage is that when we get outside, when we get our kids outside, there is something that connects us to our Creator and slows us down. It helps us to calm down, to see what is important, and to regulate. The first time we went camping, we had no tantrums. We tromped through trees, played in the dirt, hiked up hills, and looked at plants. Everything was less but also so much more.

My next resolution was to read 50 books, 15 of which are new to me. This seemed like such a big ask, but it went along with our next resolution to use less media. We want to be less phone dependent and less

T.V. addicted. Our kids are screen-free which means they have never seen a movie, T.V. show, or anything. And they are happy! They play outside, they dress up, they imagine, they build, they read, and sometimes they just take a break to hang out. As their parents, we wanted to be more like this. Instead of watching

T.V. during nap time, I decided to read more books. And the crazy thing is that I have already read 50 books, and I still have time to watch the occasional show if I wanted. I have read books on books on books, and it has been such fun. I don't miss the T.V. at all.

I am not sitting around reading Kierkegaard or Kafka all the time. Goodness, life is too hard to only read serious things. There has been the occasional grownup read, but mostly I am reading fun books from the Percy Jackson series to Crazy Rich Asians. My brain feels less foggy, I am able to be more present with my children, and I have time to truly relax because I am not flitting from tab to tab or show to show in my browser. I feel less chaotic when I am not attached to my phone, too. There's no rush to check my text messages, see who liked my Instagram post, or endlessly scroll through Facebook. I'm not falling down a YouTube hole, and I am not eyes down on my phone instead of eyes up on my world.

I am here. My heart is calmer, there is more space, and when I relax it feels still.

My last goal for the year has been to unpack (remember, we moved in December) and minimize. This will be an ongoing project, but it turns out that space gives space. Did you know that if you give yourself space in your room that there is space in your brain? I'm not saying my house will be spotless because creativity is found in a little mess here and there, but it will be less cluttered, and it will not contain trinkets that I never really wanted. I do not want clutter because I can't get rid of things or because I am keeping them out of guilt.

I am tired of all the junk in my house. Even when I am sitting and trying to relax, seeing clutter all over makes my heart and mind feel cluttered as well. So we are going to minimize and wouldn't you know that every time I take a car full of boxes to Cypress Area Ministries, my house feels safer, calmer, and kinder. That sounds silly, but I dare you to try it.

So all told, this year has been a year of less but also more.

But it could have never been this year of growth (notperfection or indie rock music) if we had notcontinued to adapt and find what worked for us.Here's my challenge for you — keep trying. Don't giveup on the New Year's thing because it feels playedout or like a list of lies you'll never keep. Don't makepromises for abs or 365 days at the gym or a book aweek or something insane.

Find a new way. Pursue growth, pursue new life,pursue change. Find a way to let the newness of theweather seep into your heart and make a newness inyou. You won't regret it.

CLAIRE MUMMERT Claire Mummert is a wife and mom of three. She is an adventure lover, Harry Potter aficionado, polyglot, baker, reader, traveler, and condoner of awkwardness. She is passionate about racial justice, adoptee rights, and theology. Currently, she works as a children's/youth minister in Katy, Texas and camps in her free time. Find Claire at OutsidetheExtraneous.com.