Resolutions

So, I was reading yesterday about year naming at Holy Experience. (I really like her blog, really, really.) She talked about giving this new year a name, sort of a focus. A way of numbering our days, ordering the time before us. She is far more poetic than I am and I encourage you to read her words on the subject.

What name would I give this new year?

I have so many things I want to do, changes I want to see occur in my life. Is there one defining focus, a unifying point of reference in all the jumble? A name that if given to this year would beautifully package and enable all the questions and heart cries I have during this time of newness.

There are many words I have been mulling over in this middle ground of end and beginning:

order, routine, peace, discipline, present, rhythm.

I will name 2009 Rhythm. More than order and routine, rhythm implies presence and peace, discipline and joy. Rhythm is a word to be shared as this year is time to be shared. Rhythm hints at the sacred.

Do you have resolutions? Do you have a name for the year?

Happy New Year

Six days late. My resolutions still linger in my mind, scattered words scratched in notebooks and journal. Still marinating in the process of planned change. Really how much change can I plan. Maybe that is the point of marinating in the ideas--praying, writing, waiting for God's plans to come to words, to express themselves in ways a mortal can understand.

I have some ideas about relationship and including and new life and completed tasks and this week I choose to finish things and to find a routine and rhythm to our lives. Like the gift of sunrise and sunset, of breathing in and breathing out, routine holds the promise of newness in each new task.

What about you? Did you make any resolutions? How are you doing six days in?

I've been reading Holy Experience as I think and plan and process.

Happy Thanksgiving
( I know a turkey is traditional, but God made this and isn't He who we're thanking?)

Quit

Moving in a week (or two). Husband hasn't decided on the exact date. Packing--boxes, tape, paper, empty bookcases and walls.

Dishes piled, yes piled, in the sink. Food stuck on. Soiled panties strewn wherever daughter has an accident and strips. Recycling spills from the containers designed to hold it. Folded laundry lounges on the coffee table. Another load wrinkles in the dryer and the underwear wait in a basket.

Flash cards. Books. Toys. Create an obstacle course throughout the house.

Still in my pajamas and little one without underwear.

I want to quit! Send in my two week notice. Retire somewhere with books and time and no one to intrude. Where I can drink a cup of tea without witness to the mess awaiting me when I am finished.

Ahh, but God whispers. All this is witness to life. Sometimes messy. At times overwhelming. But look at the little girl dancing without panties--just joy.

Maybe the lows are less about low and more about my vision.

Those hard days when nothing seems to get done regardless of how I work can bring condemnation

or

those hard days when nothing seems to get done regardless of how I work can give witness to the lives that are lived here in this home.

And that is reason to celebrate!