I started this year with seven goals, each containing three or four action steps. I’d mapped out which things I’d like to start with and got my checklists and over-scheduled planner all set up. Seven days into 2018, I’ve decided this isn’t how I want to spend my year. I love goal-setting, list making, and structuring more than the average person –and I don’t think it’s wrong if that’s what you’re up to this January. I’ve just decided that for me personally, in this year and this season, that particular method was quickly feeding into this striving, earning, perfectionist persona that I’m desperately ready to drop.

As I’ve started thinking through replacement resolutions, I’ve realized my hope for this year is actually pretty simple –I want to make room for the things that matter. For slow mornings and pour-over coffee, for Scripture and community, for laughing and cooking and writing. For good books, silence, sabbath, and beauty. For hospitality and healthier habits. For pouring out, being known, and really, truly listening. I want to learn to make space for what’s meaningful.

More of anything almost always means less of something else. Less Netflix-watching, less unhealthy eating, less wandering the aisles at Target. Less trying to appear perfect, less sleeping until ten minutes before I need to leave, less checking off to-dos just to say that they’re done. It will also mean deciding. Deciding that starting the day Bible flung-open will be better than snoozing the alarm. Deciding that inviting people into my sorta-messy house [and life] is better than never at all. Deciding that three chapters of  a book will be more life-giving than three episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. Deciding that duck fat fries with friends are worth their calories. Deciding that I’d rather see you sleepy at seven in the morning than not at all. Deciding to start when it’s scary, write when it’s hard, trust that God’s heart is kind.

So my resolution for this year is that —to decide. To decide what this year should be full of, what matters, what faithfulness looks like. And then to choose those things, over and over again. I want to learn to choose what’s better, to lift my eyes from my checklists  to Jesus, who already upholds the universe by the word of His power.