In anticipation of the new year...

So I realize it's not 2012 yet, but I've already decided what my new year's resolutions are, and there's no reason to wait. In fact, there's every reason to get started now. "If not now, then when?" as someone pithily said on the internet somewhere. And besides, getting started now gives me some time to think things through before the new year starts, and I can hit the ground running.

A bit about me. I turn thirty in February 2012, a nice, big, round number. I'm at a strange position in my life. Last year I sold most of my possessions and moved myself with my best friend to Eastern Europe. Partially because I've been wanted to move back for a long time, partially because she needed to go, and I wanted to go with her, and partially because I needed some distance from the life I had built in the States. My best friend (who we shall call Kit) and I started a business a few years back offering certain services to other businesses. Things were going well, we hired a couple employees, moved out of our living room, and started working with some business consultants. And to cut a long story short, this year we made a lot of really expensive mistakes. We are still digging ourselves out. In fact, at the moment, our business checking account is in the red over a thousand dollars, although that is not entirely our fault.


Also, over the past three years, we've incurred a lot of debt. We managed to get a loan from a friend to pay off vehicle loans before we left the country, but that's just more stuff we have to pay off. And with the business trouble we have been having these past few months, our reduced income has meant I haven't made a single loan payment since September.

As Kit also enjoys telling me, we've seriously neglected some of our client relationships. For example, there is a client who prepaid a huge amount of work exactly a year ago, and we told him we thought we could get the work done by February 2011. It's now December, and I haven't talked to him for several months. Needless to say, the money's all gone.

You get the idea.

In the meantime, over the past couple years when I became more obsessed with the business, more stressed about work and money, more materialistic, more selfish, I also became more distant from God. I have come back a long way since I moved to Europe, but not nearly far enough. I read Psalm 5 this morning, and verse 8 impressed me. In most places, the scriptures tell us to "make straight the way of the Lord". In Psalm 5:8, David asks the Lord to "make [his] way straight before my face." This is what I need in my life--I need God to show me the way he wants me to go. I believe this will help me get closer to the peaceful life I seek.

That said, I have two goals for 2012, and even if they seem a bit directionless, or lacking a proper, achievable objective, I know they will help me if I work on them. They are

1. Finish unfinished business, and
2. Become closer to God.

As Christmas approaches (now only two days away!), I hope we all find time to think about our lives and what relevance our lives have to the gift the Christ Child came to give us, and not the other way around.