So Over Starting Over

Lately, a popular Instagram caption for posted pictures has been to let everyone know what specific day of the year it is, like so: Two Wednesdays ago was 365/365, September 3rd was 246/365, so on and so forth. If you’re really cool, you might even write it as a page number: January 1st was “page 1/365,” meaning you’ve just written the first page of a book that is supposed to span 364 more 8×5-inch-pieces of blank white paper.

Well, I have a problem with that. Because today, January 13th, is not my 13/365. It is my 7,054 / ???

(Yes, I did all the math — even accounting for leap years. I have been alive for 7,054 days. You may call me a nerd. I call myself a nerd.)

Here’s the thing: Everyone is all about starting fresh in a new year, with new goals and new strategies to make sure that what happened the last few years doesn’t happen this year…when the new year turned out to be just like the previous year. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with taking time to refocus and re-evaluate in order to change certain things for the better. But if there’s one phrase I abhor most in the world (besides “get on the line!” am I right athletes) it’s “New Year, New Me.”

Because you know what January 1st was? Thursday. Yeah, it was January 1st, but it was also a Thursday, and those come every week. And in a few weeks or even days, winter break will be over and the regular grind of work or school will start back up again, just like it has been doing every year and will continue to do every year. Check back with me in about 6 weeks and tell me if anything is really “new.” For some of us, it’s already happened — it’s been almost two full weeks since the new year. How are those resolutions holding up?

You see, if you were struggling with something on December 31st, it didn’t automatically go away at midnight. Sure, you might be implementing a plan to go to the gym five days a week or have a better attitude at the workplace, but if you’re not working on the underlying problem of why you weren’t doing that in the first place, nothing will really change. New Year’s Resolutions such as these fail because they paint bright shiny gloss over the fact that you’re actually chronically lazy or that you’re bitter about working under your particular boss. We try to change our outside actions and hope that’ll eventually be enough to change how we really feel on the inside, but that’s the exact opposite of how this whole process works.

I read once a short story about a young girl who turned 11. On her birthday, she had the realization that she was “not just 11, but also 10 and 9 and 8 and 7 and 6 and 5 and 4 and 3 and 2 and 1.” I am not just on the 13th day of the next 365, but the 7,054th day of the next only God knows how many. We don’t get to start over every time the last digit on the calendar year changes.

We live in a culture obsessed with starting over, and over, and over, because there’s fanfare. There’s celebration. There’s recognition, and that feels good. There’s no long-term commitment because the longer you walk, the more likely it is that you’ll meet people headed the other way, or get tired, or trip and fall. No one ever puts any emphasis on the middle of the race, but that’s the most important part. Starting is important, and so is finishing; but if there’s no middle, then the start doesn’t matter and the end won’t happen.

There are only two times in your entire life that you will be a truly “new” person. The first is when you’re physically born, a completely new entity that this world has never experienced before. The second is when you’re born again through Christ, given a completely new identity that you’ve never experienced before. Everything else is growing and learning, some of it maybe forgotten but all of it always connected. You can’t live your life in 365-day increments because that was never the design; neither was it to start over. You’ve already started, and maybe some of you have been given a new chance through Jesus to start something new.

As for me, I’m grateful for the 7,053 days I’ve already been able to experience — the good ones, the bad ones, the boring ones, the scary ones — because they’ve shaped who and where I am today. I’m excited for however many more days God wants to give me to glorify Him. Don’t get caught up in writing a 365-page book, because the only Book of Life that matters is the one Jesus wrote your name in.

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Originally published at betterthroughlove.wordpress.com on January 2, 2015.