Loving 2011

2010.  A year filled with change, transition, traveling, questions, a gamut of emotions, road trips, friends, growth, etc.  Pictures line my walls capturing 2010's favorite moments: Virginia Beach, dance parties, orchard trips, surprise visits, Mount Union homecoming, North Carolina, Mumbai, weddings, etc.

2011.  It's here.  I'm curious what moments will fill these walls over the course of the next year.

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions.  In fact, I don't think I have ever (in my entire life) made one.  They seem futile for an individual who can't commit to even an hour of one solitary thing.

However, as I've taken a few honest looks in the mirror ("an unexamined life is not worth living," thank you, Socrates), I've realized that I want 2011 to look a little different.  I want 2011 to be marked by growth.

As I slowly creep my way into adulthood (although it can feel like a major, sudden plunge), I'm realizing more and more that, indeed, my legacy is simply an accumulation of daily choices.  It isn't necessarily the [CRU] talks I give, it isn't necessarily the lifegroups I get to lead, it isn't necessarily life-changing conversations over Starbucks, it isn't necessarily the few chances I get to have a platform, etc.  It seems, so much more often, that my legacy is those small moments of how I treat others at the (sometimes infuriating) Bowling Green post office, how I open up my home to others for dinner, how I ask meaningful questions, how I respond to the hard-to-love, how I serve those who need, how I gently touch the seemingly undesirable, etc.  The list can go on and on.  But at the end of the day, it's about how I love.  And as I breathe my last, my legacy will have simply been an accumulation of the daily choices I made to either love or not love.

And so as broad as that may be, I want love to be my theme of 2011.

As I've looked long and hard in the mirror, I've realized, I'm not particularly a good lover of people.  It bums me out that love has not been the characteristic that defines my life.  And I fear it won't change.  I fear I'm incapable of loving people well.  I fear I'm too engrossed with myself to love others well.  I fear I'm too busy building up my own sweet kingdom to love people.  I fear I'm not willing to take risks in order to love.  But I'm becoming more and more convinced that the apostle Paul is on to something when he says, "if we have not love, we have nothing."

May 2011 be different for Wags.  May it be one of love.

You are more than welcome to be in this with me.  Ask me how it's going...point out where I have not loved well...encourage me with where I have...let me know how I can specifically love you...join with me in committing 2011 to love.


[You're also welcome to track with me on a semi-unrelated project for 2011 I'm beginning: Curious Oyster].