December 31, 2010. Who woulda thunk that this date would come so quickly? A whole year. Gone again. It's weird how every year we all hope and envision some perfect year, some ideal year, where everything goes according to plan...our plan. Nothing goes wrong and everyone is happy and we have world peace. For that short time on New Year's Eve we live in this illusioned fantasy of perfection for a year. Then the year starts to happen and we realize it's anything but perfection.
It's good to hope that not everything will turn out bad, hope gets us through everything. But...this is not about hope. This is about us as humans, planning on this perfect year and then when it doesn't happen, we blame God.
We have this whole amazing, deathless, family gathering, friend visiting, every annoying person from our life disappearing, and accident/mistake free year planned in our head. From the very start of January 1st, when we wake up, we begin to try to control our year so that our ideal year will go just as we prepared. Something happens, completely out of our control and we blame God. Something happens, that was definitely our fault, and somehow God still gets blamed. Something big happens that may not exactly affect your life in the best, most happiest way, and God is blamed.
I am so, so, so guilty of this. I try so hard to control any outcome in my life. If it's not how I want it, or things start going downhill, I start to get upset with God. I did many times this year. Many times. I made choices that caused internal conflict within myself. I started to cling so desperately to a hope that I could have the best of both worlds (a Godly, Christian life-full of Jesus and His love AND a worldly life-full of material things), while at the same time my choices did everything to push Him as far away as possible. When this internal conflict started, I hoped God would just make it go away. Although, I did nothing to help. When the conflict didn't disappear, I started to get mad at God. It started becoming so easy for me to blame God for all of my suffering and pain, but it was so hard for me to see that I was the one and only reason for it. Blaming God was my easy ticket out of blaming myself and taking responsibility.
Then again, this past semester, I tried so hard to control the outcome of a situation that I had arranged in my head. When it would start to go in another direction, I would argue with God. It was like I was saying, "Okay, I'm putting everything in Your hands as long as it turns out how I want it to." When it didn't turn out how I wanted, I got mad at God again. Why would He put me through this? My heart hurts enough as it is...why is this just being added on? As I continued to work through it and chose to stop blaming God, I realized how much I brought all of this upon myself. I am to blame. I really am leaving it up to God now, everything.
My New Year's Resolution for 2011: Putting every single aspect and detail of my life, big or small (including the ones I may usually consider insignificant), in God's hands. Letting him have complete control over my life. It ain't gonna be easy, but the juice will sure as heck be worth the squeeze in the end.
I know my year won't be perfect, but it will be better with God in the mix.
