The Choices we make.

We are given the power of choice. The power to choose what is right, to choose whether to do wrong. There's no better time to make choices than during a transition. A new year, a birthday, a wedding, a new baby, a relationship, a job. Every new transition, every new change, gives us a chance to make brand new choices. Not the little ones like what you eat for supper or what you wear in the morning. But bigger choices, about who you are, what you want to be, where you should be. You plan, you choose.

So as we begin this new year, as we take these last few steps towards a new transition, we need to think critically about what our resolutions are. Because the resolutions we make. Right or wrong, good or bad, they shape what we believe this next year will be. What we believe we shall be in this next year. Whether your resolution is to change jobs, lose weight, drink less, become a better person all together, its a silent word of faith as to what you think and hope for 2012. A silent word of faith to yourself.

The reason, I believe, most of us fail at these "resolutions", these choices is because we have little faith in ourselves. In our ability to change. We are afraid to disappoint ourselves, to disappoint our loved ones and sometimes even to disappoint our enemies. We are afraid to fail. We are afraid to think less of ourselves.

But every new year we make them anyway. Because we believe that every year this is the year we shall change. The year we shall become better, bigger, richer, leaner. Sometimes, we make them in jest, so that others don't see that failing to meet them sometimes hurts us a little more than we are willing to admit. But every resolution whether personal or public is a deep desire to change and improve who we are.

Sometimes pain holds us back though. Keeps us from desiring better of ourselves. Makes us think we don't deserve better. So we resolve not to change. Not to improve. But we resolve none the less. And sometimes we have to make harder resolutions than normal. As we resolve to leave our past behind and let go. As we hold onto memories that we need to carry forward. As we resolve on what to forgive and what to forget. Not only of others but of ourselves as well.

But whether its the beginning of a new year or the turn of a new age, the change of a new job, the addition into a new family, whatever that new transition maybe, we all have choices to make and whether we admit it or not, we all make them. Choices about ourselves, choices about how we treat others, choices about how we want others to treat us. We need to remember though, every choice is ours to make.

So for the first time in many many years, I am making a couple of resolutions of my own. Hopefully to make me a better person. Resolutions have scared me before, because I have hated disappointing myself. Failing myself. They expose my weaknesses. But this year, I join the rest of the world in making a few choices of my own. I put my faith in myself but more so in God, that every resolution I make today, tomorrow and on the 31st shall not be made in vain or in jest...but in faith.

Every new transition deserves some new choices. So I ma writing mine down. On line at a time. Let's just hope this year, we stick to those choices.

#Godspeed.