second chances | Rebekah in Real Life

New Years sucks.

Well… it’s not always all bad, but it tends to be horribly overrated. There’s so much hype about new years. “Who are you going to kiss at midnight? What are your New Years Resolutions? You know that New Years Eve sets the tone for the rest of your year right?” There’s so much pressure for this to be a night of magic and wonder. Thousands of people fly to New York just to stand in Times Square late at night with a bunch of strangers to count down from ten and watch a ball drop. Millions of people make resolutions, and gyms are packed… until about three months later.

What’s the draw? This year I was dreading New Years. It was the first new years that I would spend apart from a person I had spent every New Years with since 2005. I had a lot of hardship in the past year and I really wanted to forget that 2011 happened. I didn’t want to celebrate a new year after all the hardship of the old one. However, I mustered up the energy to go spend New Years Eve with some good friends, drink apple cider, and watch the ball drop. Ten minutes till midnight I asked if we could all pray, and I said a prayer. As I started praying, I began to realize the draw for New Years. As I began to thank God for 2011 and ask him for his guidance in the upcoming year, I realized that 2012 was a fresh start. I could finally close the chapter for 2011 and look to the future.

As my friends and I touched glasses as the countdown started, a few of us agreed that 2011 sucked. But then I realized that the whole reason 2012 was so exciting for me was BECAUSE of 2011. Every hardship you go through, every lesson you learn is preparing you for the future. 2012 can be great, BECAUSE of everything you learned in 2011.

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer selves are wasting away, our inner selves are being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:16-17)

And you know what the beautiful thing is about this verse? It says we are being renewed “day by day.” So while New Years is a beautiful representation of a new start, if we screw things up a few weeks into 2012 we don’t have to give up hope. We don’t have to lose heart. We are being renewed day by day. Jesus’s mercies are new every morning.

Many of the resolutions you made on January 1st may fail, your gym membership may start collecting money while you lounge on your couch come March, and your house may stay just as messy as last year. BUT there’s one thing you can count on. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).

So… I propose a new kind of resolution. This year I resolve to live life as a new creation. I know I will mess up. I know that this year will bring its own hardships. But this isn’t a resolution that ends the first time I mess up, because His mercies are new each and every morning.

This year in 2012:

Live new. Makes mistakes and learn from this. If you fall down, don’t stay down. Don’t push 2011 so far from your memory that you forget to learn from it. Remember the good from 2011. Dream big. Look to the future. Live every day as if you’ve been given a second chance. LIVE NEW.

“Hallelujah, all will be made new.”