Resolutions

Resolutions.

After a wonderfully Christmas spirit filled week, the end of the year is drawing nigh.

Which means…

IT’S TIME TO REFLECT AND MAKE GOALS AND PREDICTIONS ABOUT LIFE FOR THE NEXT YEAR!

If you’re that type of person that is.
Which I happen to be.



I take every chance I get to think (as painful as thinking can be) and evaluate and make more plans that will undoubtedly shatter in the next couple of weeks due to unexpected, future circumstances but comfort me in the present regardless. However futile thinking, planning, and making goals may seem, I do them anyways because, well, because it’s tradition! (insert Fiddler on the Roof musical number)

So to keep with tradition, what do I want to do this coming year?

  • Overcome some of my irrational fears like salesclerks asking if I need help or ordering at Café Rio (though maybe I’ll just stay afraid but do those things anyways)
  • Leave the country (I’m counting on a study abroad to Europe in the spring)
  • Apply to graduate school (and stay in the scholastic world forever)
  • Read 50+ books
  • Go a month without sugar
  • Run another half marathon or if I’m feeling daring, a whole marathon (preferably on a beach somewhere beautiful)



And what did I love about this past year?

  • Being a missionary in Germany for half of it
  • Going back to BYU
  • Taking wonderful, eye-opening history classes
  • Learning to embrace vulnerability—as a missionary and as a normal person 
  • Trying to re-figure out life
  • Spending time with my family




Success done and success to come. It’s always this time of year (okay, maybe it’s actually all the time) when I think about many happy memories from the past and long to hold onto them forever. And sometimes, those past experiences seem a lot brighter than the uncertain future—which, from my perspective, is constantly shifting and never steady. That’s part of the adventure of being alive, but it’s also terrifying. Like making breakfast. Kind of.

As it turns out though, my somewhat rational fear of the future reflects a lack of faith that the future can be even better than the happy life I’ve lived so far. Despite those terrifying upcoming big decisions of further schooling, grown-up jobs, relationships, and having a family.

I’m stealing some thoughts I wrote at the end of my mission in one of my emails home:

Sometimes I feel exactly like Caitlin Rush described it: "I have always had a hard time facing change and am hesitant to let go of good things. I miss the past even while it is still the present, desperate to enjoy fully moments in which I consciously and determinedly live. I know when I have a good thing, and I want to hold on and never let go... Usually when I realize how good things are, I instantly begin thinking of how everything is fleeting, that it will eventually be lost to time or circumstance."
But then she realized something marvelous: we can enjoy what we have in the moment and let it go when it comes to move on to other good things.
Elder Holland counseled us to not let our attachment to the past outweigh our confidence to the future. He said,

"Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the ‘high priest of good things to come.’"

So that’s what is coming this year. More good things that can be savored as a cherished memories and also stand as reminder that great things are still ahead of me. 
For that is one of my life resolutions: let the good keep coming

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