In with the new.

Happy New Year, folks! Hope y'all had a wonderful holiday season; ours was very quiet and relaxing, a perfect ending to a tumultuous 2013.

Tumultuous, yet bittersweet. 2013 was filled with overwhelming challenges and growing pains, but it was also the year we welcomed our Riley to the family, our ever-smiling, bubbly, tenacious ginger baby boy. It was the year we met some amazing new friends and learned some tough but invaluable life lessons.

2013 marked another milestone as well: my 30th birthday! The day after Christmas, I bid adieu to my 20s. My besties from high school (with some help from my man) threw me a surprise birthday party the weekend before Christmas, and my husband surprised me with a gift certificate for a massage the morning of my birthday. (And y'all, I'm not an easy person to surprise, so I give them mad props!)

My two BFFs gave me a Sephora gift card, and with it I purchased something daring...my first tube of bright red lip gloss. It's always been a color I shied away from, but I figured, new year = a new look. Well, actually, if I'm being honest, I bought it for its name: Hot Mama. I'm hoping it's prophetic. :)

This past week, a new dear friend of mine took me out to eat and gave me this little cutie:

It's actually a bath fizz, but doesn't it just look delicious? I had to remind myself not to eat it! She also gave me this new journal:

It's a perfect gift for two reasons: I'd just told my husband I wanted to start strengthening my writing skills. I wanted to start doing some creative writing exercises and writing songs again in this new year. And I love the phrase on the front: Say things to the world that are true.

There's something about turning 30...What a rollercoaster of emotions that surfaced with this birthday! A current of indignation has been flowing through me as I have vowed not to bring issues I dealt with in my 20s into this new decade. One thing I'm learning is not to be afraid to speak the truth in love, and to be true to myself. I've lost so much of myself in my terrible habit of trying to please others, and letting others control my life: my decisions, my thoughts, my feelings, my schedule, etc. I've loved others out of compulsion and guilt instead of freedom and sincerity. For some reason, turning 30 has been just the permission I needed to take control of my own life and grow up into a real live adult. :)
 
The freshness of a new year gleams with possibility. It's the clean eraser to the dusty chalkboard of the year that's passed. All the challenges, trials, pain and failures of 2013 have been swiped away, and what remains is an open slate, ready for fresh marks.

New Years Day is one of my favorite holidays, for this very reason. The opportunity to set new goals and look forward to the year with lively anticipation is so refreshing to me.

Philippians 3:13 says, "I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, though Christ Jesus, is calling us."

2013, you gave us "What the fox say?", which my son has listened to 863 times, and for that I thank you. But you were also one antagonistic bully, and to you, I say "good riddance."

So what am I pressing on toward in 2014? Well, my resolutions list is looking a little more grown up this year as well. Instead of the usual "lose 10 pounds" and "learn to play piano" that reoccur as resolutions every new year, this time I'm focusing more on living in freedom from now on.

The past couple of months has brought layers of tough but inspiring revelations to my life, mostly about God's love for me, and what it means to be in a relationship with Him. I've lived the first 30 years of my life as a slave to the law: everything was black or white, right or wrong. And if I slipped up or made a mistake, I was condemned. I was such a rule-follower, afraid to fail for fear of falling out of relationship with the Lord and losing love from Him or others. But I'm realizing that, though the Bible is full of laws, He never intended for life to be about the law itself. He intended for it to be about a loving, honest, real relationship with the One who created us for Himself. And that's what I intend to get back to: serving Him out of an overflow of love for Him.

So, with that as my inspiration, here are a few of my goals for this year:

1. To love and be good to my body.  My entire life, I've been overly critical and unforgiving of my physical appearance, nitpicking and bullying myself into tyrannical submission, slaving through workouts to punish myself for indulging my sweet tooth. Not anymore. I realize that my body is an incredible gift, so I'm vowing to be good to it. To nourish and protect it. To eat well, not to keep the number on the scale low, but to prevent disease and promote health and well-being. I'm also going to be changing the way I work out: more yoga and low impact workouts that relax and center me.  

2. Live simply. Less clutter, less drama, less stress, less hobbies and material things. Freeing my life from as many useless distractions as possible. To set boundaries that protect me from getting overextended and strung out, so I'll have time for things that feed my soul and allow me to be poured out to help those in need.

3. Balance grace and truth. I recently read a new book, Changes That Heal, that explains this balance worlds better than I could ever try, but basically, I've been leaning way more towards truth than grace. Grace is the acceptance of oneself or others enough to make it possible to accept the truth, which saves us. Truth without grace leads to condemnation, and grace without truth leads to destruction. I want to work on achieving a healthy balance of the two.

4. Cultivate the thing I'm most good at. I already mentioned this, but I want to write more. And write better. Instead of spreading myself too thin participating in hobbies I'm only so-so at, I want to invest more in my writing abilities.

5. Start something that matters. I have to be vague on this one, but I'll hopefully be able to elaborate more as the year progresses.

6. Most importantly, pursue the One who matters most. I want to rekindle the flame with my first Love. To understand why I was created, and take joy in being in the presence of my Savior. It is, after all, the reason I was put on this planet.

To dive headfirst into this last one, I'm participating in our church's 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting. Among other things, I'll be taking a break from all social media for the remainder of January, so that I can be single-minded and get 2014 started off on the right foot.

See you guys in February!