I Am a New-Year’s-Resolutions Kind of Girl

I like the tradition and practice of making New Year’s Resolutions. I know a lot of people don’t bother, saying they never keep them anyway.

And OK, I know I’ve started the “read through the Bible in a year” routine more times than I can count only to abandon it around mid-February.

But this year, I’m going to approach this whole resolution thing in a different way. I have one resolution, which I hope will serve as an umbrella to everything else in my life. That one resolution can be summed up in one word:

I resolve to live with intention.

This week, I managed to finally—FINALLY!—get my “office” set up. This involved moving and rearranging furniture and cleaning out old papers. It was way overdue. But in the process of thumbing through old receipts and grocery lists and recipes and wrapping paper scraps (really??? I kept all of that stuff???), I realized something important.

I had failed to live with intention.

The pile of paper was a tangible result of living in reaction and in the tyranny of the urgent.

So, maybe some of it was inevitable. I am, after all, in a season of life that sucks every drip of energy out of me.

But getting rid of all of that paper was so liberating. It geared me up to live with intention.

My goals for this year involve pursuing a closer walk with God, improving my health/losing weight, and growing my blogging and writing endeavors.

But those things must be attacked from a posture of intention.

Intentionality also assumes a sense of priority. I say that my faith, my health, and my writing are important to me. But I have not always prioritized them and made an intentional effort to work at them.

Above all, the older I get, the more I realize how big God is and how small I am. I am confronted by his strength made perfect in my weakness. I am more convinced that my primary purpose—whether I’m on an elliptical machine, posting to my blog, or cleaning out my desk—is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

I want to be INTENTIONAL about living out God’s purpose for me in 2010 and beyond.

I added this post at The Happy Housewife and at Steph in the City. Visit and read some more 2010 resolutions.