The Reluctant Resolver

Welp. Here we are, facing another New Year. Should I declare Honesty to be the best Policy, and proclaim that this year I will not lose weight, exercise or be on time? I will not get my taxes done by April 15th, I won’t get organized, nor will I prepare better meals. And, I most likely won’t get my scripture reading in each and every single day, I won’t have my Sunday lessons read before Sunday, and I won’t give up gossiping. *sigh*

Who could face a world with no progress? The year before last I did lose weight, and last year I didn’t gain all of it back, isn’t that worth something? The year before last I trained for a half-triathalon, and last year I kept walking most of the time. My main activity for the year was remodeling our house and moving. Moving involves sorting papers. In those papers I found a wish list I’d written several years earlier of things that desperately needed doing to our house. I discovered that last year we did every blessed thing on the list, times ten. Isn’t that worth something?

So what’s the point of this Resolving thing? To make you feel guilty for never accomplishing anything you say you will? Would it be better to couch resolves in possible terms like “This year I will work on being closer to being on time, when I can (and it’s really important).” Which is of course admitting that “I’ll be late to almost everything, for yet another year. Get used to it.”

That would be a life without hope. There is some sort of saying that says “Shoot for the stars, so that you’ll lift above the tree tops.” My life is more like “Shoot for the knee caps, so you’ll lift above your toes.” But oh well, progress is progress.

I look at it this way. Think of a horizon line. The trajectory of the Savior’s life went like a rocket, straight up to Heaven. I learned as little as possible about math in high school, but I still know that’s a 90 degree angle. If your angle of life is say, one o’clock, or about 85 degrees, you’re still going to get to Heaven, but it’s going to take slightly longer. Most of us don’t even have a two o’ clock trajectory, and most of our lives are a graph line that trembles upward with occasional plunges downward, with the great hope that the general trend is more up than down. Kind of like a graph of someone playing with a yo-yo while climbing stairs. Up and down, and up and down, but generally rising higher (like the stock market, so we hope).

The point is, that if our angle of trajectory for getting to Heaven is as little as one degree, eventually, sometime in our lives, we’re going to make it. It might take us longer, and we might have to hope that Heavenly Father allows for overtime, but it is possible.

So I’m going to do it. I’m going to say “This year, I’m going to be on time to church.” “I’m going to get back to exercising come Spring (I’m such a fair weather friend when it comes to exercising), and I’m going to whittle off another 25 pounds.” “I’m going to think before I speak and bridle my tongue.” More than that, “I’m going to think while I think, and bridle my thoughts!” Etc. Etc. Etc.

When I was a teen, my Dad had our family memorize a poem by Langston Hughes. It goes something like this:

Hold fast to dreams,
For when dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams,
For when dreams go,
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

So I’m going to keep dreaming, and keep resolving, and keep inching my toes forward. It’s mostly two steps forward and one step back, and sometimes one step forward and two steps back. But if there is in the end more steps forward than back, well-- that’s progress! Since I am apparently not a rocket-type person, nor a Hare type, and sadly, not even a Tortoise, I’m getting to be okay with the snail’s path to exaltation.

So you bet, I’m going to Resolve to Resolve. Again. How about you?

Joy in the Journey