So 2020 has officially begun...and everyone who was born before the 2000's is silently feeling terribly old. *raises hand* There's a pretty daily planner with a marbled cover on my desk--I'd been wanting one from this brand for years; this year was the first time the price wasn't ridiculously high. That has helped anchor me to reality, to make 2020 sink in. Call me superficial, but there is a considerable amount of satisfaction you can get from nice stationery, especially if you're using said stationery everyday first thing in the mornings! thoughts on 2019: 2019 was finally--finally--a less stressful year for me. I was starting to get the hang of my different jobs, picking myself up after the crushing and mildly traumatic sink-or-swim phase that came with starting every new job. Learning to not care so much about what people thought about me and just focus on faithfully doing my job well, humbly accepting that I was not good at it and had much to learn. Conscientiously working on the bad and unhealthy coping mechanisms I'd become aware of. Learning to find refreshing and encouragement in serving, and to have healthier perspectives and mindsets towards people and problems. To see God's bigger picture, even when it--usually--went against the grain of my comfort/convenience/ideal of what things should be like. Having said that, there are still many things I'd like to grow away from, looking forward to 2020. Yes, I've gone through Donald Whitney's 10 Questions! (a little tradition I've started for transitioning to a new year) I also had some important experiences and realizations over the end of the year, which made me more thoughtful about relationships and interactions, and motivated to be more purposeful about them this year. In 2020 I want to: --be more active and intentional in cultivating meaningful friendships and spending quality time= having meaningful conversations. I'm very good at small talk. Too good. I want to pursue conversations which matter, conversations which bring your friendship to a new level and hopefully encourage growth in each other as well. To talk about what matters. I've had a similar such resolution before I imagine, but it's been getting more specific over the years. How exactly do you pursue meaningful and strong friendships? I've been slowly discovering that, I believe. Coming a step close each year. Wishing I'd started thinking about this earlier, of course, but all in good time. Related to this, also a resolution to--don't laugh--not talk too much. I'm just as scared of awkward pauses as anyone. So that means that I often jump to fill the gaps, leaping from one lead to another, and with quieter people who don't talk easily, I end up talking incessantly for the sake of keeping the conversation going. Listen more. Learn to ask people what they think, listen, instead of jumping in to talk or feeling like I need to give advice/my take immediately. This is something I learnt from teaching Sunday School, but funnily enough I hadn't thought about applying it with adults, in my friendships. --to grow in prayer. Now, this has been popping up with embarrassing regularity on all my new year's resolutions. Embarrassing because it shows how the only consistency in my prayer life so far has been inconsistency. Now and then I hit a good streak, and feel pleased, only to break down all the good habits over a holiday or when something new pops up to make me busy. It's discouraging, but it also keeps me from becoming complacent. It just shows me how unreliable discipline and self-control are, as tempting as it may seem to see them as the solution. I thought carefully about this, how I could really make some change in this area, and felt that there were some things I had never given thought to, which would help me to make this change. But more on that another day! --not to let pride/social expectations/insecurities consume you. There is always the temptation to develop insecurities or try to justify so-called failures or lacks (eg. salary, future, ambitions, social life, lovelife etc) When you compare yourself with others, there are always things you feel you're missing out on. And since this is a difficult blow for our pride to accept, we tend to respond by slavishly chasing after those things, or finding reasons to justify it to ourselves so we can feel better. "If I hadn't chosen to serve more in church, I could have gotten better grades/a better job/that opportunity, but ah, you see my priorities were in the right place." I'm not being snarky here, neither am I dissing the fact that sacrifices like that can genuinely happen in a good and godly way. But it's a very real temptation, to cling to "legitimate" excuses which give us a sense of comfort that we didn't miss out--actually just another subtle form of blame-shifting, onto circumstances, onto people, onto God. I'm being honest here. I found myself, when I was feeling sorry for myself and wishing my dreams had worked out the way I wanted them to, tempted to blame it on those auditions/opportunities which I passed up, because they fell on Sundays. I could have opened up a very different--more exciting!--road, and be in a very different place now. But it wasn't my fault, it was *God's*. To be honest, humble, and not to live life in slavery to creating certain image of success/happiness/fulfilment. --to be gentle. I realize that, though people often think I'm a loving/gentle person because of petty external things like care-packs, being sensitive/helpful etc. But much of this is often just a child-like desire to be kind, to make people happy. Not actual Christ-like love, the true type which endures. When it comes to the real, gritty work of dying to self, of living out love in a gory everyday way, I am anything but gentle and loving. Hardheartedness, pride, selfishness, they're all there. It reminds me of a quote from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (truly an amazing book if you ever have the patience and courage to embark on it) "A true act of love, on the other hand, requires hard work and patience, and for some, it is a whole way of life." A warning that love is not merely the pretty, pleasant externalities we tend to associate it with, which are easy to talk about and easy to perform, like buying someone a bouquet or saying "I love you." We should not measure how loving we are, or how great our love is, by how often or how well we can perform these things. Just as the monk in the novel realized that his professed love for mankind was an abstract, theoretical love that actually shied away from the tough, often unpleasant work of loving individuals: "I love mankind...but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular." --*continue* learning to trust more. I thought it would get clearer, as it has been the past two years, but it's again reached a crossroads/ uncertainty. Having to learn to trust again, especially after expectations that things would start to sort themselves out and get clearer. Things which seemed to have been becoming clearer have led to (seeming) deadends, whether in relationships or career or just general life direction. It's been frustrating as I assumed that they would sort themselves out by now, to feel that I'm back at square one. But it really goes to show that trust is something that we never stop needing to learn. We are so tempted to think that once we pass this current hurdle--once God gives us a job, or helps us reach that level of financial stability, or gives us certainty about our career paths, or the right person to marry, or when our children believe in Christ--we would have done with it. But it never stops. We are always anxiously trying to control our lives, to make sure they turn out well, to ensure we live comfortably and pleasantly. Being aware of this is in itself a learning point. At least, for me.
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