New Year's Plans

This is a bit overdue as I had been planning to write an entry on January 1st in celebration of the New Year.

I hate making New Year's resolutions because I find that immediately I believe they are doomed to failure based on their well known statistics.  I'd rather say casually that I have New Year's plans and leave it at that.

My New Year's Plans include:

-finding a new apartment (by April)
-buying a digital SLR
-losing 30 lbs.
-learning to sew
-MAYBE getting a 2nd greyhound (depending on new apartment)
-start a savings account

So I think they're all pretty reasonable.  The hardest one will obviously be the losing 30 lbs but I've been doing clean eating (with the exception of Cheat Saturdays) and feel pretty confident that I'll be able to stick to it this time.

A friend of mine on Facebook noted that each year she would pick one word and work toward that in whatever way required.  For example, if she felt led to choose "peaceful", she would seek to find peace in reading or spending alone time etc.  This year she chose "purposeful" and the idea kinda stuck with me.

So what's my word for this year?  Well, don't laugh, but I decided to go with "dazzled".  Now, I know that sounds glitzy, like a My Little Pony line or a nail polish colour, but the context is much different.   

While reading Les Miserables this past week (and I still have so much left of it), I was struck by a paragraph that I drew the word from.

"...He could not perhaps say what took place in his spirit, what went out from him and what entered in:  a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe. He pondered on the greatness and the living presence of God, on the mystery of eternity in the future and, even more strange, eternity in the past, on all the infinity manifest to his eyes and to his senses; and without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible he contemplated these things. He did not scrutinise God but let his eyes be dazzled..."

And so this is what has truly captured my heart.  How often do we attempt to find reasons or logic, to understand the plans of God and to get into His mindset. We want to know it all and we want to understand the way the world works, fractals and wonders, creation that astonishes us and perplexes us.  Scientists spend their lives attempting to break down and examine, reason away why the world is able to function on such an evolved scale without believing in an intelligent designer.

In some ways I find that we spend our lives taking pictures, attempting to capture every moment and save it, sometimes losing focus and lacking the true appreciation of the wonderful things in life. Such a lesson that we can continually learn over and over.. It reminds me of a sermon I heard as a child where the preacher extolled: "Don't glance, gaze..."

So that is also my New Year's plan:  to spend more time allowing myself to be awestruck by the beauty around, by the greatness and infinite nature of God, but the life I have been.

Cute pictures of kitties and my boyfriend smiling at me to end this more serious post!