Forward

Happy 2016!

I hope you had a fun night with family and/or friends last night. Maybe you stayed up, watched the ball drop and then crashed. Maybe you crashed before midnight. (No judgment here. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.) Maybe midnight was just the halfway point of your evening. (And if you’re hungover, take two migraine medicine pills, go eat a big greasy meal and go back to bed. Drink LOTS of water today.)

Brad and I didn’t have the kids for Christmas this year so went on a Christmas cruise down to Cozumel. You know what that means. LOTS of food.

I got on the treadmill once over the trip, but I knew that if I waited too long before running again, well, that just might be the end of it.

We got the kids back on the 28th, did our delayed Christmas and headed up to Augusta the next day for New Years. The first morning here, I slipped out while most of the house was still asleep and went for a run.

Brad’s brother and his family live in a neighborhood behind Brad’s parents’ subdivision. So I headed down the little path between the two and decided to jog through West Lake.

My sister-in-law had showed me a nice little running loop, which I had done over Thanksgiving. But I guess I was feeling especially adventurous (or stupid) that morning so I decided to just start running and figure out how to get back later. I mean, how big could the neighborhood be?

Turns out, pretty big.

So I did my usual 30-minute run and once I started my cool-down walk, I pulled up the map on my phone to figure out where I was in relation to where I wanted to be.

Aw crap.

I was not close at all. I guess somewhere in my mind I thought since it was a gated community, if I just stayed on the main road, eventually it would wind back around. Well, I was only halfway to ‘eventually,’ and from how it looked, the fastest way to get home was to go back the way I came.

I groaned in annoyance and in that moment, confirmed one of my biggest pet peeves: backtracking.

It reminded me of grocery shopping at Publix. I want to move from one side of the store to the other, picking up everything I need in order of appearance. Then after I get what I need on the last aisle, I check out and leave.

I’ve been to Publix about a zillion times and have only managed to pull that off maybe twice. I’ll get two-thirds through the store and realize I have to go back for something I need in Aisle 2.

I don’t know why it bothers me so much. A first world problem, to be sure. But I think we all have an innate pull toward forward motion. And when we’re forced to backtrack, it feels like a waste.

I trudged down a hill that I had jogged up just minutes before, feeling particularly awesome because it was raining. Oh yeah, did I mention it was raining? Drizzling off and on. Jogging up that hill in the rain felt pretty badass. Walking down the same in the rain because I was lost was embarrassing.

I kicked myself for not making a plan and figuring out a route before I started, which could have prevented this useless waste of energy. It reminded me of a conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland (old school, animated version). The path she’s on has led her to several trees covered with multiple signs pointing multiple directions and she can’t make sense of them. The Cheshire Cat appears out of nowhere, all singy and weird, and Alice decides to ask for help.

Alice: I just wanted to ask you which way I ought to go.
Cheshire Cat: Well, that depends on where you want to get to.
Alice: Oh, it really doesn’t matter. As long as I –
Cheshire Cat: Then it really doesn’t matter which way you go.

Yeah, that had been me at the beginning of my run. I didn’t care where I ended up. I just wanted to run for 30 minutes. It didn’t matter where.

Well, all of a sudden, it mattered a lot. I was out of energy, low on morale, wet and hungry. And I was nowhere near home.

Reminding myself I was heading toward home helped a little. But I still would have rather gotten there going forward than back. Backtracking just sucks.

It’s not that backtracking unimportant. Sometimes it’s absolutely critical. But whether it’s necessary or not, it just always feels frustrating. I’ve already been here. I shouldn’t have to come back to this place.

But I’ve been in therapy long enough to know that oftentimes, you can’t move forward healthily without some backtracking. (Blech.) You know, the patterns and mindsets and habits and coping mechanisms that are so ingrained in us all started somewhere. Good counselors can take you back to those places safely, shed some new light on the subject and help you determine if that part of your life is something you want to keep or kill.

Sometimes you reach a point where the reality of a mistake becomes glaringly obvious. And you can’t move forward with integrity without going back, making amends, returning what was taken or restoring what was broken. So there are times when going back is desperately important (albeit still annoying).

But other times we choose to backtrack in unhealthy ways. Rehearsing old hurts until they solidify our identity as victims. Reliving old mistakes until they permanently rename us as failures. Even obsessing about good things that are no more until the concrete around our feet hardens and leaves us stuck in the past.

Just after New Years LAST year, God and I had a similar conversation as Alice and the Cheshire Cat. I needed to decide where I would like to be, or really WHO I would like to be, at the end of 2015 and make a loose plan to get there.

Here we go, you’re thinking. The old New Years resolution speech. Gag. SO not gonna happen.

Wait, wait, wait. That’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t do resolutions.

Just the word ‘resolution’ is just so heavy and weighty. I don’t need that kind of pressure, you know. Because the more pressure I feel, the less chance that resolution has to make it past the second week of January. And then once I blow it, I throw in the towel and go on to live another aimless year.

But LAST year, (per Michael Hyatt’s suggestion) I tried something different: New Year’s GOALS. Goals, you see, are something you shoot for, not something you’re swearing will happen. So even if you don’t reach them, chances are you’ll have at least made progress in that direction. And that’s what it’s all about, right? Forward motion.

I made 12 New Year’s goals last year and I typed them in the notes on my phone so I could check back periodically and see how I was doing.

1. Drink more water.
2. Post to blog once a week.
3. Quit guilt.
4. Play with Herschel.
5. Become an activist.
6. Practice humility.
7. Exercise three times a week.
8. Stick to budget.
9. Pray for difficult people.
10. Get/stay within goal weight.
11. Bless one person each day.
12. Go to church every Sunday.

I did nail several (1, 2, 3 and 7), which I’m pretty proud of, and made significant progress on several of the others (4, 5, 6 and 10). All and all, I’m thrilled with where I am.

And that’s the other thing about goals. Goals can be tweaked, changed or adjusted. Resolutions feel carved in stone (pressure), and if you try to change them midstream, you’ve already broken them (guilt). I don’t need it!

But I did make a couple course corrections on my list of goals this past year. There were two I had initially listed that were just not feasible for my current stage of life and I desperately needed those spots for a couple others God put on my heart. (Gotta leave room for God to move.) So I made the necessary adjustments without any sense of guilt or failure.

I was poring back over my 2015 goals and looking at the few that I had made zero progress on (8, 9, 11 and 12). I reluctantly asked a friend if I was obligated to carry those over to my 2016 goals. “No way,” he said. “Kick ‘em to the curb. Start fresh.”

I let out a sigh of relief. Yeah, that felt better. No need to start the year off in the red. (And that’s not to say I won’t work on them. They just won’t be on the list.)

I have no idea what 2016 will bring, but I know what I’M going to bring. I know where/who I want to be at the end of 2016 (ish) and I’ve penciled a loose strategy on how to get there.

We’ve all heard the Yiddish proverb, “Man plans and God laughs.” And I know He does. But I also know that He used to get frustrated with me when I would just sit on my hands and whine that He wasn’t doing anything fresh in my life. He was waiting for me to get up and get moving, in ANY direction, and we could course correct as we went.

In Isaiah, the Lord says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

And so in response to Him, I echo David’s prayer, “Show me the way I should go, for to You I entrust my life,” (Psalm 143:8).

If you need to do some necessary backtracking, go for it. Get it over with. It may feel like retracing wasted steps, but sometimes the only way to truly move forward is to go back. Maybe you’re lost and you need to get back to a better starting point. Heal the past, clean up some unfinished business, drop some baggage and walk on.

On the other hand, if you’re in the habit of unhealthy backtracking, make this year the year you do an about-face and take a step forward into the great unknown. I understand the comfort of the familiar, no matter how painful it may be. But you were made for more.

Children of the King can only be prisoners again by choice. You have been set free (Galations 5:1) and you have been given everything you need for a godly life (2 Peter 1:3). Call the enemy’s bluff and walk in freedom.

Take the first couple weeks of January (no need to start RIGHT NOW) and make some goals. No more than 10 or 12. They can be physical, professional, relational or spiritual. Post them someplace you will see them regularly.

And take the pressure off. These goals are not a blood oath. They’re just a tentative plan on how to head toward where/who you want to be. Then give God the pencil and let Him edit the list. He is the One with THE Plan, after all.

I got my 12 typed in for this year. I’m fully expecting at least a couple tweaks as I go, but I’ve got a good starting point. And just looking at the list fills me with wild hope. Not because there’s anything earthshattering on there. But just because it’s a plan for progress.

Grab God’s outstretched hand and let’s make it count in 2016.

Forward!