For years, I would begin the new year like many others, making resolutions that I would struggle to keep. Then I would feel guilty for failing to keep them. Questions like "what's wrong with me?", "why do I keep doing the same thing", and "will I ever get this right" would swirl through my head. I enter the new year with expectation of something different, something better. The problem is the year may be new, but I am not. I am the same me that I was on December 31st. And the day before that. And the day before that. The year may have changed, but I have not.
I have had many loved ones who battled one addiction or another. They would always think if they could go somewhere else things would be different. No matter how far away they would go, the story would be the same. They would end up hanging around the same kind of people, doing the same thing. Changing where they were did not change who they were. They would change their location, but not their addiction. The thing they are trying to escape is carried with them wherever they go.
Often we try to outrun ourselves. We think if I can just get a better job, if I can just lose weight, if I just move somewhere else; then things will change. We strive towards the outward things, when we really need to be looking at the internal things. The thing with change is that it is a process. It takes time. It takes perseverance. It takes doing the things you don't want to do and sometimes it means not doing the things that you do want to do. It means facing things that you really do not want to face. For true change to occur, it has to begin on the inside. Psalm 139 invites God to search my heart, to expose what lurks in the darkness there. Only through God can true and lasting change be found.
I have stopped making resolutions. Resolutions are about what I am going to do differently. Change comes by asking God what He wants to do differently. It is easier to run from the things we battle. It is easier to make resolutions that we know we are going to break. It is easier to just accept things as they are. But God, never called us to remain the same. We are a continual work in progress. A masterpiece in the making.
This year, I surrender my resolutions in favor of God's promises. I open my heart to God and ask Him to search me and transform me into who He desires me to be. It's not about me and what I can do. It's all about God doing what only He can do.