ŷ������

I spent the New Year holiday weekend in the mountains with family friends. Away from wifi, reliable cell service, cable tv, and Netflix. (Don’t worry, I’ll be posting pictures soon) It was kind of annoying and kind of refreshing to get away from social media and snapchat and constant texts and emails. I came home Saturday night and scrolled through some of my favorite blogs. It looked like, while I was sleeping in a bunk-bed in the mountains, everyone had uploaded their obligatory “Here’s to 2015�� posts. I saw a lot of reflections, resolutions, dreams, and lists. Some were cheesy, some were great, and a lot of them were very well-worded and inspiring.

But as soon as I pulled up my blog, opened a new post, and started typing, I realized I just didn’t have the motivation it takes to write my own sappy “Here’s to 2015�� post. I don’t really have a list of things I want to do better this year because I didn’t really feel like I failed at life last year. I wouldn’t change anything about 2014, and I wouldn’t want to hold myself to the same redundant standards year after year. “This is the year I’ll eat better/exercise more/travel often/read 100 books/discover the cure to cancer…��

The most important lesson I learned last year is that I really can’t make any broad plans for my future. You never know when you’ll move overseas for four months or find yourself sitting on an elephant or petting a tiger or adopting a German Shepherd or walking across a splintering railroad track thirty feet above the water. Life happens. God makes big decisions for us sometimes and adventures just fall into our laps. How could anything I plan for myself be more amazing than the things He’s already made happen for me?

I don’t want eating healthy or exercising or traveling or reading to be things that characterize my life in 2015. Those are habits and traits and gifts that will always be a part of my life. And they’ll change and morph as I grow older. 2015 might be the year I discover yoga and figure out how to lift my foot above my head while humming “Kumbaya.�� Or it might be the year I squeeze in two mile runs once or twice a week and call it a day. It might be the year of experimenting with homemade Indian food and mixing my own chai teas. Or I might stick to oatmeal and cereal and pbj sandwiches on honey oat bread.

The point I’m making is this: How am I supposed to know? We can plot and plan and pre-arrange our lives as much as we want, but we have no idea what the coming year will bring. What we’ll do. Where we’ll go. What we’ll discover about ourselves.

My resolution right now is to simply keep living and growing. Every day I’m discovering something new about myself. I find a verse I’ve read a million times and one morning in March, when the windowpane is cold and the sun falls through my broken blinds, I change. In an instant, I’m different. I could never make a resolution as gripping as the change that life naturally brings.

So whatever plans you made for this year, leave room to be surprised. I certainly have things I hope I get to do. I’d like to go to my first major league baseball game. I want to finally see a silent film in our art deco movie theater. I’d love to make it to Chicago, and back to New York, and anywhere else I can afford to go. I want to get another henna tattoo and try chalking my hair and figure out how to work my Polaroid camera. Those are all little dreams I’d love to see come true, but they won’t make or break my year.

This year, I don’t want to be so concerned with the goals I set for myself that I forget to take advantages of the surprises that pop up along the way. The books I’d never heard of. The spontaneous road trips. The long nights with deep conversation and mornings when I wake up too early. I know I’ll grow and change this year because I’ve grown and changed every year before it. And I certainly want to learn new things and follow Jesus more closely. But He’ll be the one moving me around, opening my eyes, and checking off His list as He reveals to me every truth He has in store. No pile of resolutions, wishes, or plans could ever compare to the adventure of walking with Him in this new year and being happy to grow into myself.

-Rachel

The post appeared first on .