Resolution 2018: Resolve Nothing. By Patricia Beal.

Because why bother?

Let me tell you about 2017. It was completely bonkers. All my plans fell apart and all the gains came out of nowhere—God's perfect gifts.

I planned a smooth debut launch. Instead, on the night before my first novel came out, we had a family situation so intense and scary that the novel was the last thing in my mind.

I had hotel reservations and booked flights to attend two writers conferences and one readers retreat in 2017. I had to cancel everything to be with family. That was the right and the wise thing to do.

The plan was to stay in El Paso now that my husband is retired. But the old North Carolina house didn't sell, so we moved into it. Yep. Back to where it all started. Fort Bragg.

The plan was to transition the kids from their Texas public school to a Christian academy in North Carolina. Within a month it was clear that they couldn't accommodate my son's unique needs, and in late September I got a license to homeschool. 

The plan was for my daughter to stay at the academy, but she now wants to come home too. So my home school is about to double in size. After the Christmas break, she will begin receiving her education at home too. 

I expected Les Stobbe to continue being my agent. Instead, he decided to retire from agenting and sold his agency to The Steve Laube Agency, so I'm with them now.

I didn't plan to have an audiobook. But looks like one will happen soon. 

A Season to Dance is now available in Portuguese (an old dream, since I have a lot of Brazilian followers and since my family is there and no one speaks English). But the paperback travels from here, and it takes time. The book is expensive too. Brazilians are not into e-readers, so the ebook is not much of a solution. The result? We're not selling as well as we had hoped. Can we sell? Yes. But it will take a big effort. It will be time consuming. Right now I can't do all I would like to do. I'm editing a manuscript that has to be finished by January 3.

Bonkers. Just bonkers.

Am I hopeful? Absolutely. A lot of these unexpected changes seemed scary at first, but have become a blessing. 

The problem? I'm exhausted. I can't keep this up.

So I hereby resolve to resolve nothing. If I don't have resolutions and let God drive in peace, maybe I can be less tired, and I can enjoy the journey more. I want to take this trip one stop at a time. Now it's manuscript work. Later it will be...

Wait. Nope. That's planning.

I don't know what the next stop is. I'm at the manuscript-work stop. When God shows me the next stop, I will take that in and go from there. 

How about that? Can you live that way? Do you do that already? What are your end-of-year rituals and/or evaluation processes?

Love,
Patricia

Patricia Beal writes contemporary fiction and is represented by Bob Hostetler of The Steve Laube Agency.

Her debut novel, A Season to Dance, came out in May (Bling! / Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas 2017).

She’s a 2015 Genesis semi-finalist and First Impressions finalist. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Cincinnati in 1998 with a B.A. in English Literature and then worked as a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army for seven years. She and her husband live in North Carolina with their two children.

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4 days into 2017... How are those resolutions going?

There is something about the start of a new year that gives us courage to say this time will be different. All of us go there at some stage. If you don't believe me, just read your Facebook / Twitter feed on Old Years Eve.

This year I going to ...

get into shape

get out of debt

finish that novel

spend more time with my kids

get organised 

quit being negative

be happy

bath the dog at least twice a month

Sound familiar? So we leap from one year to the next, hoping for change. Some manage to stick to it and if you're one of those, you have my undying admiration! For me, none of it has ever stuck and I think I've figured out why.

Resolutions (goals, if you will) are decisions we make and attempt to see through in our own strength. This can be a set up for failure. Consider this:

• Most new years resolutions are made during the December holidays. You're on holiday. You're going to bed when you feel like it and waking up without your alarm clock. You have time to think and reassess. The pace of life is different, less rushed. The demands of normal life have been shoved into a cupboard with duct tape over their mouths.

• We make resolutions and stick to them by the sheer force of our will. For some of us, this backfires spectacularly. I've discovered that my won't power, is far stronger than my will power. The moment I eyeball myself in the mirror and declare I will stop eating chocolate this year, without fail, the rebel in me rises up with a smirk and says Oh, really? 

• We don't live in a vacuum. We are surrounded by family and circumstances who aren't bothered in the slightest about our resolutions and for the most part won't help us keep them. Trust me, I have two teenagers and one pre-teen. Seldom are my tidy plans and their social lives in sync.

But there is hope for those of us who long for change, and it's to be found at the feet of Jesus. We don't need another set of resolutions, those impossible lines that one can neither limbo under or vault over. 

What we need is vision. God-inspired, God-breathed, God-empowered vision. 

When you sit with Him and He says... Okay girl, how about we tackle this debt?. You're in a good place to start working on it because you are doing it hand-in-hand with the One who is able to do what you alone cannot.

Vision is seeing your life through His eyes and walking it into reality holding His hand. Not relying on yourself, but fully trusting Him and His ability to help you.

So I guess you could say I do have a new years resolution - no more resolutions!

Dianne J. Wilson writes novels from her hometown in East London, South Africa, where she lives with her husband and three daughters. She has just signed a three book contract for a YA series, Spirit Walker, with Pelican / Watershed.

Finding Mia is available from Amazon, Pelican / Harbourlight, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

Shackles is available as a free ebook from Amazon & Smashwords.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter and her sporadic blog Doodles.

Be still, by Iola Goulton

It's 2016, a new year, and over the last few weeks I've seen my social media news feeds full of people announcing their New Year's Resolutions (or plans. Or anti-resolutions.)

I've also seen many Christians announcing their word for the year. These words are typically encouraging, words like grace, peace, strong, challenge, balance, flourish. In fact, the “one word” movement is so popular it has its own website: www.myoneword.org. Their tagline: Change Your Life with Just One Word.

The My One Word movement comes from Pastor Mike Ashcraft, who uses the process in his church, both at an organizational and individual level. The idea is resolutions often centre on the negative: things we don’t like about ourselves, things we’d like to change. A long list of negatives that makes us feel bad about ourselves before we’ve even started. A long list that reduces our ability to focus.

In contrast, the My One Word challenge is about looking at who God wants us to become, and to pick one word on which to focus that positive change over the year.

My first thought in looking at the My One Word website was skepticism. I wasn’t convinced that one word can change a life. One person can: Jesus. But one word?

But then I got thinking . . .

Too many people have grown up with a wrong image of themselves, an image based on the words other people have used to describe them. Us. Words like stupid, fat, slow. Or twisting positive words so they come out sounding like a negative. Pretty. Intelligent. Sporty.

Sometimes we speak the negative words to ourselves. I’m too busy. I’m too sick. I’m too poor. I could never do that. Is that the truth? Or is it the lie we tell ourselves so we can avoid trying, avoid failing?

Words have power.

The words we think, the words we say, the words we write. The words we read. The words we hear.

Too many of us have spent our lives listening to the negative words from ourselves and others, allowing those negative words to rule in our lives. Instead, we should be listening to God. Some of us are simply too busy, too sick, too poor, to take time to listen to God.

Too busy is certainly one of my problems—when I first started thinking about this One Word idea, the word which came to me was overwhelmed. Hardly the stuff of inspiration.

But it made me step back, think about all I’d like to achieve this year, and how I’m going to do it. Feeling overwhelmed isn’t going to help. That’s the feeling that keeps me awake at night, wondering if I’ll be able to cram an extra few hours into the next day.

But then a verse popped into my mind. As they do.

Be still, and know that I am God (Ps 46:10, NIV)

Be still. Be still, and allow God to work in me, to plan for me, prepare the way ahead of me.

Be still.

It’s more aspirational than any list of resolutions I could have dreamed up. And more challenging. Yet there is a peace in the word that confirms God is in it.

Be still.

Be still, and know that I am God.

Do you have a word for 2016?

IOLA GOULTON lives with her husband, two teenagers and cat in the sunny Bay of Plenty in New Zealand, between Hobbiton and the Kiwifruit Capital of the World. She holds a degree in marketing, has a background in human resource consulting and freelance editing, is active in her local church and plays in a brass band.

Iola is a reader, reviewer and freelance editor who is currently writing her first novel, contemporary Christian romance with a Kiwi twist, and her first non-fiction book, which aims to help first-time authors navigate the changing world of Christian publishing.

Connect with Iola at www.iolagoulton.com (a work in progress she’s trying not to be overwhelmed by!) and www.christianreads.blogspot.com.

Writing Resolutions

Every new year I go through the same debate: should I or should I not make some resolutions? My general feeling is that to 'resolve' to do anything puts far too much pressure on me to 'pass' or 'fail'. So instead, I like to call it goal setting. But isn't it just the same thing and do I really have to do it?

Part of me wants to say: no, I don’t have to do it – I resolve never to make a resolution again! But another part of me, which at times feels wiser but at others simply obsessed, knows that I operate best when I place down some markers. This is in all areas of my life. Do I want to remain the same or do I want to change?

I’m sure there are some areas of yourself that you quite like and don’t want to change; others that you would like to, and still others that you simply must for the sake of everyone concerned. On a personal level, I know that I need to work more on my patience. I seem to have very little of it with my daughter at the moment. I know that I cannot change her but I can change myself. I can’t do it on my own of course, but as patience is listed as a fruit of the Spirit, I’m committing to ‘work’ on this with God this year. I’m not off to a very good start as today is her first day back at school and we had a tiff as she dragged her feet this morning. Oh dear.

But back to writing. Like most of you I should imagine, I feel discouraged when a book or script proposal is rejected; or the ‘big break’ I was hoping for seems as elusive as ever. It’s at times like this that I need to look back on some of my past goals. Last year I set myself 10 writing goals. Seven of them have been achieved. That’s not bad going and I need to force myself to look at what I have achieved rather than what I haven’t.

I will be setting some new goals for this year over the next couple of days. Perhaps you are doing the same. If so, here are some things to consider:

1. Before setting new goals, prayerfully go over last year’s goals and thank God for what He has already done for you.
2. Ask Him to guide you in this year’s goal-setting.
3. Break down your year into chunks: what do you want to achieve by Easter, the end of summer, etc.?
4. Make sure the majority of your goals are in your power to achieve. Do you have the technical ability to achieve them? Do you have the time available to achieve them? Is the final decision for or against, in your control? For instance, ‘getting a big publishing deal’ is not in your power; writing the best manuscript you can then sending it off to publishers is.
5. Write down some goals that are impossible in your own strength. This seems like a contradiction of the previous point, but if you only restrict your goals to what you know you can do, you won’t leave room for God.

Finally, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this. (Ps 37:4-5)

Happy New Year!

Fiona Veitch Smith’s apartheid thriller, The Peace Garden, is now available on Kindle. Her latest children’s book, David and the Kingmaker , is available in shops in the UK but may be ordered from anywhere in the world through the Crafty Publishing website.

To Resolve or not To Resolve by Marcia Lee Laycock

I was delivering Christmas cards last week and stopped in to the small gym where I have been noticeable only by my absence lately. I admit I felt a little guilty going in the door. The owner greeted me with a wide smile and we wished one another a Merry Christmas. Then I said, “One of my New Year’s resolutions will be to get here more often.” My friend shook her head. “Oh don’t do that, don’t make yourself feel guilty about it!” Then she stammered a bit. “But …. I don’t mean …. Do come back!”
We laughed and I assured her I would.

I’ve been thinking about what she said ever since. I’ve been thinking about guilt. It does seem to be a big part of what we do at this time of year. We feel guilty for all the things we didn’t do in the past year - like finish that novel or write that article that’s still in draft form in the computer -and most of us resolve to do better. So guilt isn’t such a bad thing, if, and that’s a big if, we make the changes necessary in our lives. If guilt is unresolved it becomes an unhealthy thing and can lead to bitterness and anger that will only make us miserable. But guilt that leads to change, that’s healthy guilt.

So I have decided to make that New Year’s resolution, and a few others – like finish that novel and write that article - and I’ve gone a step further. I have a plan for carrying it out. Often that’s the key. If we just dwell on our guilty feelings and set no goals or plans for how to change, nothing constructive will happen. Unhealthy guilt will result.

I’ve heard many people scoff and say that all religion does is make you feel guilty. They are absolutely right. But Jesus has gone a step further. He has set out a plan that wipes away the guilt. All we have to do is move from religion to relationship. Accept Him as our brother, our friend, our saviour, and no amount of guilt can hold us down.

The word guilt appears a few times in the Bible. My favourite is in the book of Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 22 – “let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”

I like those words, “assurance”, “cleanse” and “washed with pure water.” Though the guilt of our sin may bear us down, there is forgiveness. No matter what we have done, or what has been done to us, God forgives, and we are set free “by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body…” (Hebrews 10:20).
The best resolution any of us can make as we move into 2011 is to get to know Him more. I pray we will all resolve to do so. It’s the only way to get rid of all that guilt.

Visit Marcia's website at www.vinemarc.com