Oh Boy! It’s almost the New Year. 

We can make a New Start.

It’s time for New Year’s Resolutions!

I always feel a little silly making New Year’s Resolutions.  I plan to work out more.  I plan to eat healthy foods.  It seems cliché and kind of depressing to continually make the same New Year’s Resolutions.  I should have already made those changes, right?

I’ll start out strong.  I’ll be disciplined and healthy and I’ll lose the 5 pounds I gained during the holidays.  Then I’ll get cocky.  I’ll start slipping and relaxing and I’ll find myself here again next year, making the same resolutions.  Usually writing out my intentions for the New year with a chocolate chip cookie in one hand and coffee cake crumbs on my pajamas that I’m still wearing at noon. 

I’m bored with the whole thing.

I’ve decided my resolutions this year will be more meaningful. 

The problem with my New Year’s Resolutions is that I make them so lofty.  Not only will I try to eat less junk, I’ll look like Jillian Michaels by spring break!  Not only will I eat healthy, I’ll buy all the healthy cook books and become an expert at making healthy meals for my family.  (This is from a girl who burns toast.  At my wedding shower, I received a couple of oven gloves and I thought they were for gardening.  It’s sad when all the moms and grandmas and aunts of your fiancée are laughing at you and feeling sorry for your husband to be.  Things have not changed much.  We all have different gifts…)

This year, I plan to make one resolution and here it is.  I plan to love more.

That’s right.  I plan to LOVE MORE.  LOVE in all of its forms.  I plan to love my husband more, love my friends more, love my kids more, love my family more, love my co-workers more, love my home more, love my job more, love God more, love the world more, love the people I disagree with, and the list goes on.  

There will be one question I will ask.  Am I acting out of love?  If not, I will try again. 

I will not kid myself into believing this will be accomplished this month or even this year.  This is a resolution I don’t mind re-making every year.  There is always a chance to love more.  It benefits everyone and isn’t all about me.  I’ll be so busy loving everyone and everything (Am I sounding lofty?), I won’t have time to worry that my jeans are a little snug.  Hopefully I’ll be so filled with love, no one will notice.  They’ll be looking at my smile. 

Every act of love is a work of peace no matter how small.

-Blessed Mother Teresa