At one point or another I think pretty much everyone gives up on making New Year’s Resolutions. We get tired of mapping out what our ideal self would be like, giving it our best, falling back to some level of reality, and then living with a sense of disappointment that we created.

This year is my year. I’m giving up on New Year’s Resolutions.

It’s taken me longer than some people to give up on New Year’s Resolutions. Since I’m both naturally a pretty driven individual and I believe that we need to make the most of this one and only life we’ve been given, I tend to strive, and strain, and push more than most. Typically the time around the New Years brings out these tendencies more than others. I look back at the year behind at what I’ve accomplished and who I’ve become and then, chastened by the inadequacy of it all, I make plans, I resolve, to push harder, to do better, and to do more.

This year that stops (or at least I’m turning it down as best I can).

I’ve realized that the things that are most worth having I already have – an incredible God, a loving family, and a few good friends – and the things most worth being, I already am – primarily, loved.

So this year, I am resolved to be grateful and to cultivate gratitude for what I already have and already am.

Also, I have realized that the things I really want most in life are beyond my control anyway. There is very little I can do to free people that I care about from their addictions. There is very little I can do to create that amazing moment in someone’s life where they hear God’s voice and feel God’s presence. I can’t give soul level comfort, peace, joy, and purpose the way that we all need – the way that only God can. No matter how much I might want to there is very little I can do to convince or persuade anyone to say “YES!” with a sense of abandon to the with-God life – and then begin to truly come alive for the first time, like a light bulb learning to glow. There is very little that I can do to bring peace in my neighborhood or peace in the world.

So this year, I will continue to do the little I can but I am resolved to give these things in prayer to the one who can bring these dreams and desires to life. Or, as an old priest once put it, I will practice “giving the world back to God.”

This year, I resolve to squeeze this life less and hold it with an open hand to God.

God, may it be so!