KSC’s Blog

I don’t know if you set any resolutions for this year, but when my kids woke up early on January 1st, I asked them to write down 10 things that they resolve to change in the new year and email them to me. This is what they wrote down:

Besides the fact that they were a little similar to one another, I noticed something in the language that they used. For my youngest, most of the things that he wrote were things that he was NOT going to do, where as for my oldest, most of the things that she wrote were things she WANTED to do. And maybe that’s because we internally know that it’s not just helpful to stop doing something, as much as it is to start doing something. That a bad habit or behavior needs to be replaced with a good one, or it will be hard to quit. But there’s another thing that I noticed. The younger the child, the more definitive the goal was, but the oldest one started almost every resolution with “try.” And when I saw that, there was something that I identified with. Because the older you are, the more you know yourself, and the more you know that every year, you want to change, but it’s difficult. And so, instead of making any definitive promises, we say we’ll try it, if we make any at all.

It was a reminder that as we get older, we don’t believe that we can change. And it was a reminder that we can only change by the grace of God.

Lord, please give me the wisdom to believe that I can change and the courage to actually change.

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