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The start of a new year is, as we all know, the ideal springboard for transformation into your “better” self.  Your thinner self, your debt-free self, your more organized self, or any other projected self-image might be your goal as you plunge into a season of greater self-discipline.  Plenty of New Years in the past have propelled me into very good things, things like daily exercise or extreme nutrition or daily journaling.

This New Year’s weekend I searched for that ambition and resolve within me, and felt a growing frustration at myself when I couldn’t find any… anywhere.  As a young mom with a son entering toddler-hood, it’s a pretty good day if I can eat three meals, shower, spend some time with Jesus, wash a few dishes or run an errand, and sit and talk with my husband for half an hour at the end of the day.

Lord, I said, I just don’t feel up to it.

I don’t feel up to conjuring grand ambitions and aspirations right now.  This is not a bad season at all.  I just don’t know how I could manage putting one more thing on this plate without having the plate and all its toppings topple off the table.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere on New Year’s afternoon, I heard a whisper:  “Just keep it simple: walk with God.”  I thought “Aww, that’s a good quote.  That almost sounds like something the Lord would say.”   I paused and reflected a few more moments.  Then a humbling awareness came over me as I realized it was the Lord speaking.  And then a wave of relief washed over me.  “Okay, Lord, you know me so well.  You know that I self-impose all these pressures because I measure myself by a measuring stick that’s not yours.  You know that the only thing I really need is to know you and be known by you.”

What does it mean to “walk” with Him?  Literally, what does it mean to take a walk with anybody?  Walking together means a lot of things.  It means you’re moving together, in the same direction and at the same pace.  It means you’re viewing the world from the same vantage point.  It means you face steep hills together as well as the level places.  Even if the climb sometimes makes you pant and gives you blisters, and doesn’t appear very impressive to onlookers, there’s joy in the climb if you’re in it together.  Or it may mean that you’ve chosen to “waste” time on each other, simply because you take delight in their company.  It means that you share in the experience of  beauty.  And the more walks you walk together, the fewer words are required in order to know what the other is thinking and feeling.

For my New Year’s resolution, I resolve to practice awareness of His presence.  I will practice engaging in dialogue with Him throughout my day.  I will practice keeping it simple, and will allow Him to help me rid that closet in my soul of all those other measuring sticks.  How joyous is a walk in communion with Him!   What a glorious ambition to be the Lord’s companion!  So even if walking with Him is the only thing I aspire to this year, I’m relieved to know that’s what He really wants of me anyway.

Micah 6:8

He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Alicia Williams