I am resolved... (part 1)


I really hate making New Years resolutions. I’ve done it before, but they have never amounted to anything worthwhile. My resolutions have always been somewhat trivial, intensely focused on making me better than I was before. It’s a bit of an unhealthy cycle.
But not this year. This year I am standing at a crossroad. The finale of 2010 was exceptionally difficult for me. I graduated from college, finishing up four and a half years at a place that transformed my life. I moved back to Hoover, leaving behind a life that I had spent half a decade building. I left a church, and for the first time in my life doing so was devastating because I loved the church, not because I had been betrayed by it.

To be completely honest, I am not yet excited about 2011 because I feel like 2010 and I have unfinished business. The last two weeks have been a strange conglomeration of bliss and depression. Leaving Nashville has meant leaving my life, my friends, and my independence behind. It is a strange feeling. I haven’t properly coped with being back in Hoover yet. I am exceeding blessed, to be sure, and that makes it that much more difficult to be frustrated with my life. Who am I to be so down? I have a college degree, a loving family, and a place to live. I think I am depressed because I feel that my frustrations are selfish, but I cannot move them from my mind.
But in spite of my current frustrations, I am resolved to make this next year an important one.
The last year was a year of transformation for me. For the first time in my life, I am completely confident in who I am. This is saying something for someone who has spent a lifetime being insecure. Expressing that confidence to others is still a bit difficult, but it’s there. I am not going to take this confidence for granted though. I refuse to let people bring me down. It has taken so long for me to find my voice that it would be an insult to my journey if I let someone stifle me.
I am going to focus on myself this year. I spent the last year focusing on the health of my spirit. I’m going to spend 2011 focusing on the health of my body. I am learning what it means to break down the constructs of the Christian dualism between body and spirit, and I have neglected one part of my whole self for too long. This ends now.
As I focus on myself, I am going to focus on others…because really we are all only our truest selves when we are living through others. Ubuntu. This year I want to wear Ubuntu like a crest. I want it to be my daily thought. I am the fullness of who I am only when I am living through other people. Relationships.
Last summer when I was terrified about all my friends moving away after graduation I beseeched the Holy to place new friends in my life. I was abundantly blessed with new friends who formed the bedrock of my sanity during the fall. I am willing to take that risk with the Holy again.
I admit that I’m writing this just after the clock has struck 2011, and so I’m sure there is more I want to say. Out of respect for the handful of you who may actually take the time to read this, I promise to provide a more complete picture of my resolved-ness tomorrow. I am resolved to live this year. I’m tired of hiding from life. I’m done being afraid.
In words from Eminem, whose album Recovery was easily one of my favorite things about 2010, “I am not afraid.”

I'm not afraid to take a stand

Everybody come take my hand

We'll walk this road together, through the storm

Whatever weather, cold or warm

Just let you know that, you're not alone

(you can now read part 2 here)

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