Resolutions 2013

New year, new resolutions. I don't know if I am alone in this, but whenever I make resolutions, they usually last one, two, maybe three months and then they fall to the wayside. Life gets in the way, or maybe it's just hard to keep them. This year my resolution is to find Happiness in the little things and not get so stressed out. This seems vague and challenging, but to quote Barney Stinson: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

To be happy is a huge undertaking, and admittedly, when you look at it as a whole it sounds downright crazy. But I do crazy well. And... I have come up with some steps that I think will help me on this crazy journey of being Happy. 

Step one of a happy, healthy year: Do little good things, and offer up the not-so-good things to God, and try to do better.

Now this does not mean that 2013 will be all rainbows and unicorns? No.. probably not (although if it literally was that would be awesome). This is where I am going to take a page, or maybe a chapter from the books of some friends of mine. Spiritual friends that is. My first step to a happy and healthy year? The Little Way. St. Terese of Lisieux writes about her little way of following God. Sometimes it's not the big things that we do, but the little. Mother Teresa once said, " I can do no great things, only small things with great love." 

And when life isn't rainbows, unicorns, and feelings of joy and happiness? Well, that's where the work of being self-aware and in love with God will come into play. Life doesn't always work the way we want it, or the way we think it should. We're human and we make it messy, but it is the love and hope that we are given by God that allows us to overcome and find that Happiness.

Step two: Surrender to Love

This step actually comes via a tweet. "Where there is Love, there is hope." I am not sure where Debby Ryan found this or if God place it on her heart, no matter where it came from however, it is a Good and True insight. Love gives hope. Everyone needs hope. Hope is healthy. Hope brings us out of the darkness, or at least opens our eyes to the dawn. Love is hope. God is my hope and my Love. 

This year is about rooting myself in God's Love and Joy, and therefore, rooting myself in hope. If I can surrender to Love, then I surrender to the hope that things can and will be better, but it keeps despair from grabbing hold of the interior life. Once again, Therese's Little Way will play a huge role in this, but also my girl Julian of Norwich. She helped me through comps, and she has become a great spiritual friend. She writes, “If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.”

We are not living in a world full of rainbows and unicorns. We live in a world dominated by fear and excess, but this year I choose to live with Happiness and Joy and in Love.  I know the foundation of this resolution rests on prayer and faith, so it seems fitting to end with a prayer:

Day breaks swiftly.
Darkness disappears
          in rosy haze from
          reluctant planets
          in glowing azure sky.

At dawn we call upon you,
          bright morning light.
You are the beginning of
          a sweeping freshness
          that has appeared in history,
          the freshness of life
          that ends death and
          awakens dry bones.

~Fr. Richard Fragomeni