On the first day of the New Year, I finished copying notes from 2021 from Lauren's and my Ink+Volt personal organizers into a Word document on my computer. The finished document contains 11,008-words and is 29-pages long. Gleaning the big takeaways may yet take a few more days at least, but for now I am trying to break everything into major categories.
Family, church, work, friendships, podcasting, book-reading, trips taken, current events - all of them affected and were affected by our choices and attitude. It stands to reason then that goals set for the new year should be informed by a strong commitment to personal growth and maturity through the good, the bad, and the ugly.
At the end of the day, week, month, and year, we want to make better decisions. And avoiding tired platitudes or truisms which may fail to engage our hearts and minds fully, we have to be honest about where we have been, what we have done, and who we are. Only through that honesty can we humbly move forward in strength and confidence.
Yet again - and I cannot stress this enough - our ability or inability to execute perfectly is not the point. And in point-of-fact, meditating on God's grace in Christ can set us free to learn the lessons we need to in order to achieve more faithful stewardship of what the Lord has entrusted to us.
Now I begin to do both things at the same time, since we are in January already. Analyzing last year systematically while at the same time beginning to put down intentional goals and expectations for myself, my family, and my engagement in every other sphere, all parties concerned will be better served in the coming months.
