living into the new year

i head back to school today. i feel that even though the year is 7 days old already, it truly begins for me today. the human measurement of time is arbitrary anyway, so i decided to celebrate my personal new years today. a date that is more than simply arbitrary.
today i return to the place where my life is routine. to the place where i am making and breaking the habits that might last me a lifetime. to the easiest place to lose myself and the best place to be affirmed. i return to a home filled with 8 lovely people (though one is leaving and one is joining) who are committed to living god out through their lives together; an apartment housing the three most wonderful, rambunctious girls who ever drove me crazy and laughed me silly and held me close and dried my tears and helped me keep home; a job that brings me energy and challenge, commitment, little sleep once a week, and lots of joys and sorrows, regrets and hopes; a staff the supports and inspires me; a larger academic community that frames my current pursuit of love, passion, joy, hope, and God. and all this bounded by beautiful landscape, not-too distant mountains, and the absolutely stunning virgina climate.
i also return to a new set of duties, of classes, of learning. to new books and new profs, new friends and new subjects, new worries, new hopes, new dreams, new passions.
last night i journaled about what it means to re-commit at the turning of the year. to re-commit to God and myself and to the world around me. to re-commit to being the best that i can be. to put forward "resolutions" that might assist me in doing so. to create goals, that may or may not be kept. to re-evaluate my ways of living and of being. and to focus once again, as i have so many times before, on what it means to be a disciple to the man who gave up everything so that he could better love the world.
and even in all of my new years "resolution-ing" i admit that i am not worthy, not strong, not committed enough to see it all through. i am lazy, i am proud, i am selfish. but some how, and who knows why, i hope, i pray, and sometimes i even believe, that the spirit of the one who made all that is before me and who lives in all that is around me and who loves, without ceasing, all that is within me will guide me, will fill me, and will teach me to love as she loves, to care as he cares, and to live as God made flesh did, those two-thousand odd years ago.

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