New Year's Grace

It's time to think about New Year's resolutions again.

Augh.

I stopped making resolutions a long time ago because I always failed at keeping them. Read the Bible in a year? Nope. Stop yelling at the kids? Nope.

And marking off the days on the calendar was only like a noose around my neck, getting tighter with every day I failed. How many of us actually make it through January without breaking one or all of our resolutions?

I'm an all-or-nothing kind of person. If I can't do it well, I'd rather not do it at all. Recently I had a conversation with a friend about feeling like we can give only 20% of ourselves to our teaching right now. We'd like to give more, but we just can't, which makes us feel like we are doing our students (in my case, my children) a disservice. And it drives us crazy because we are both people who want to give 100%!

Later that night, I replayed the conversation in my mind and realized that I've changed over the years. The younger me would feel guilty, discouraged, and depressed and call myself a 'failure'. If I've learned anything in my 11 years of being a parent, it's this:

give yourself grace.

Don't compare yourself to others. Accept your limitations. Life happens. I'd love to help out more at church or have guests over more often, but with a three-month-old and a toddler, it's difficult right now. And that's okay.

And I will add this. Though I can only give 20% of myself to my teaching, I am giving all of that 20%. I am still committed to being there everyday, helping my children learn, even if the learning is mostly from a book and not from outings and activities. If the clock says 9am and we're still finishing up breakfast when we should be starting school, we will still attempt to cover all our subjects that day.

As wise as Jedi Master Yoda may be, he wasn't entirely correct when he said, "Do or do not, there is no try." Because sometimes, you have to try in order to eventually do (I tell my kids this all the time). And if something is worth doing, it's worth the effort.

So, I'm going to try again. My New Year's resolution is to read the Bible everyday, starting from the first chapter of the first book. If I miss a day, that's okay. If I don't read the whole Bible in 365 days, that's okay too. And I'm not even starting on January 1st; I started three days ago. Because it's not about doing it the "right" way, or about beating myself up when I fail. I am a child of grace and growing in small increments is better than not growing at all. 

Whether or not you have resolutions for 2015, let this year be your year of grace.