Hope in the New Year

   New Year's Eve is here-I honestly can't believe it!
   The new year offers us something I think we all need. A fresh start. Sure, life goes on, and all the same troubles follow us, but there is something about a new year that makes us want to re-boot. Why do we make new year resolutions? To re-boot! 
    Do you have a new years resolution for this coming year? I kept my new years resolution from last year.....I resolved not to make a resolution at all. I know, it's so lazy. But I was tired of failing.

Keziah and I

   A friend told me her resolution, and it's simply to eat more veggies. Not to eat less bad stuff, or exercise more, or anything like that. Just to eat more veg. I liked it for it's simplicity, it's lack of "rules" that new years resolutions often have, and that it sounded totally do-able! It got me thinking; I really should resolve to do something.  

Abigail and I being weirdos

   So, as I often do, I found inspiration in my children. 
   Before school let out for Christmas, my daughter Abby received a Terrific Kids award for Hope. 
   In some ways the ideas of hope is abstract, and unreachable. But as I looked at my beautiful 5 year old, and heard what her teacher had to say about her showing the virtue of hope, and also inspiring hope in others, I knew I wanted it too. 

Abigail with her award

   So, my new years resolution is to try to have more hope (and in doing so, to encourage others to hope too). Webster's says hope is: "the state which promotes the desire of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one's life or in the world at large". Basically, to think a little more positively!  
   I currently have a serious hope deficiency....although people see me as outgoing, and generally happy, deep down, I lack that "state which promotes the desire of positive outcomes"-in many areas of my life!
   I've seen on Pinterest where you have a jar, and all year you write things that have happened that were good, and at the end of the year you read all the good things in the jar. I liked the idea, but knew I was too pessimistic to ever think anything was good enough to put in the jar. So, I'm going to do a Hope Jar instead.

I know it's still empty! I'll get my hopes in there, don't worry!

    What I plan to do is to write some things I am hopeful for in this new year and put them into the jar. Some will be serious, and some will be light hearted, but I am going to choose to hope, and choose to be positive. I will likely add a few hopes as the year goes on, there are no rules, I'm just making this up! 
    At the end of 2014, I will open the jar, and see how the year went. My hope (wow, I'm doing it already!), is that in writing some things down, I will be thinking & praying about the hopes in the jar. Even as hard times come, I want to know that I am making an effort to be hopeful. 

At the theatre during a rehearsal for The King & I. I literally put this photo here because apparently I am not in a lot of photos by myself, and this was one of the only ones I had with me smiling!

​    Do you have a new years resolution? If you don't, why not? Think of something-anything-that you want to re-boot.....why not do it now? There are no guidelines for a resolution, just do it! And if you fail (I'm talking to myself here too)? Try again! 
     
​    Have a great night, whatever you're doing, and I'll be here again next year (aka-tomorrow). :)