(This blog post is adapted from my January 2025 newsletter. I send only one email each month, so you can trust that I will never spam you or bulk up your inbox; instead, my monthly newsletters are jam-packed with encouragements, life stories, family photos, “you heard it here first” music news, recommendations, & more — plus an audio link each month for you to listen podcast-style rather than reading! If you haven’t already, click here to sign up.)
Winter has a way of making things look bleak. Even as we enter spring (albeit a particularly stormy one), our general outlook toward 2025 might not be very optimistic. And statistically speaking, there’s a high likelihood that those of you who made New Year’s Resolutions have already fallen behind on some of those goals — if not given up on them entirely. Perhaps you’re already days if not weeks behind on a “Bible in a Year” reading plan. Few of us have likely eaten as healthily as we’d hoped or gone to the gym as frequently as we’d aspired to. On top of all of this, this past winter’s rampant storms and illnesses interfered in many of our goals; I know I can personally confess how discouraging it was.
I’ve personally gone back and forth over the years about whether to craft any concrete resolutions for myself. This year, I made a few plans and commitments, but I didn’t make any “resolutions,” proper. This is coming pretty freshly off of 2023, when I made the most serious and detailed resolutions of my entire life, as pictured in these two pieces of paper, which are filled to the brim with bullet points I wrote for myself in late 2022:
These 2023 resolutions are still hanging up in my house. The bullet points ranged from vague values and principles to rigorously specific plans and goals. Two years later, these two pieces of paper represent a wide array of feelings: disappointment and shame, yes, but excitement and determination also. If I were to separate this long list of resolutions into categories, I’d say that it’s about one-third resolutions which were more-or-less fulfilled in 2023 or 2024 (such as my plans to record and release Unfall II); one-third resolutions which are still ongoing to this day (such as me and my wife’s desire to host new people at our house at least once a month); and one-third resolutions which have been entirely forgotten or abandoned (be that for good or for ill). I continue to keep these resolutions hung up because I’ve found it to be a healthy experience to occasionally read through them, to remind myself of what’s important, to remember how God has moved in my life in recent years, to find a sense of satisfaction in the goals which have been fulfilled (even if later than originally planned), and to find motivation to continue pursuing the goals and dreams which still lie out ahead within the potential future.
Multiple times in recent years, I’ve seen people share the hyper-intellectual opinion that New Year’s Day is just another day, that there’s nothing special about it, and that making resolutions is pointless. This is the type of assertion where people are so convinced of their intelligence that they fly straight past the truth and land on a falsehood on the opposite side of what they’re arguing against. Is there anything magical about January 1st specifically? No. Are you a different person than you were on December 31? Not by any meaningful margin, no. But the calendar year is a reality. The earth really did orbit around the sun, and you experienced four very real seasons, which occur in consistent patterns every twelve months. So while there is nothing special about January 1st in theory, it makes a whole lot of sense that we would have a day set aside each year to reflect upon the passage of yet another year, yet another orbit around the sun, and I think it’s pretty neat that January 1st represents a time where we can all commit to this reflection in tandem, in community with each other.
At the same time, if you didn’t use this past January 1st to reflect upon 2024 and think ahead to the rest of 2025, it’s not too late! You can set aside any day of your choice (the Spring Equinox, your birthday, or whatever!) to ponder who you’ve been, who you are, and who you’re becoming. Through your actions, words, and character, do you think you’re having the positive influence you desire on those within your life (friends, co-workers, spouse, children, etc.)? Are you making decisions on a moment-by-moment, day-by-day basis that reflect the person you want to be?
Earlier this year, I wrote a new song about the act of becoming, about the deep-down reality of who we are. Is the definition of “you” something that’s already set in stone or is it something that’s still being defined as you continue living life? I would argue vehemently for the latter, but the philosophy of the former has been a pervading viewpoint in many of our lives. This philosophy states that you were born exactly as you are, exactly as you should be, and that your self-realization and self-fulfillment can only be found by looking backwards to your childhood, to your time-biased understanding of who you were, in essence, born to be. If this is your personal view on the matter, I don’t expect to change your mind within a blog post, and I would also love to dialogue with you about this topic. But even so, I want to encourage everyone to consider the possibility that what lies ahead in the future for your life, in the future that you are building for yourself through decisions big and small every day, can be far greater than anything that lies behind you — as wonderful as some memories may be. Consider the trajectory that your life is on: Has it been determined and there’s nothing you can do about it? Is there only one right trajectory for your life? Or might there be a multitude of ways that you can walk into the future in maturity, health, and fulfillment?
During my final semester of college, when I very wrongly thought that I had some idea of where my life would be headed after graduation, I had a professor who taught us that the answer to the question “Who am I?” will continue to change until the day we die. And I think he was right. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is a challenge that we each face daily. The greatest deeds and accomplishments of your past cannot protect you from the reality that, at any given moment, you could absolutely destroy your life in under five minutes; likewise, the greatest sins of your past (both the ones committed by you and committed against you) do not need to keep you from growing, changing, repenting, forgiving, and finding joy in the mundane details of the day you’re living right now.
