Rather than making resolutions, I have added to my "must/mustn't list"

Must:
•​give more of myself than seems possible

•​give a witness of what I have seen

•​learn to rest

•​learn more about my identity

•​listen more readily

•​compile and reduce my wardrobe

•​line up creative activities

•​work more and pay more in order to pay less

•​start asking more probing questions


Mustn’t:
•​fail to try

•​believe what I know to be a lie

•​waste money

•​waste time

•​think that all is for naught

•​condemn what I do not understand

•​live a life against the good command

•​shrink back for the fear of man

•​spend time in self-serving imaginary worlds

•​jump to conclusions

•​submit to escapism

•​resort to excuses

As His Bridegroom.

”..Nor is the Church barely lovely, she is superlatively so. Her Lord styles her Thou fairest among women. She has a real worth and excellence which cannot be rivalled by all the nobility and royalty of the world. If Jesus could exchange his elect bride for all the queens and empresses of earth, or even for the angels in heaven, he would not, for he puts her first and foremost-fairest among women. Like the moon she far outshines the stars…” - Spurgeon

We are lovely when we let the incarnate shine.

simpler then.

it was simpler then, i'll say. life should always be as simple as this. the most terrifying thing in the world should be a gust of wind and the sensation of a friend passing underneath you on the swingset. or, the most complex thing in the world should be the monkeybars, i could say that, too. the biggest thing we ever do should be climb to the crest of a slide and slip down, courageously, into the mulch below.

"O spare
Me now, my friends, your packages
Of God, your simple adages:
"Be good and strong, but weak when wrong."
They make good rote and clever song,
But do not hold the wisdom of
Our God. A whisper from above
Is all I have. Yet from it I
Have learned through horrid nights that my
Redeemer lives, and when my skin
Has been destroyed, then from within
Shall I behold him on my side,
And I will live though I have died."

this.