New Year's/Old Year's Resolutions--I've Heard it Both Ways

New year's resolutions always kick my butt. I mean I make resolutions but let's face it, my resolve dissolves as fast as cookies in milk. I wasn't making new resolutions, I was really just wringing milk from last year's cookies and passing those soggy things off as next year's Oreos. So, then it got easier to not make resolutions. . . to break. But then there's guilt. And pounds. And dust bunnies. And chocolate cake for breakfast. And brain drain.

So last year I resolved to be more resolute. I thought carefully about what I wanted to accomplish. I had a long list of soggy cookies I could resurrect, but I decided to leave them all in the cup. If I died at the end of the year, would I really care if I had exercised, or eaten broccoli, or even if I'd read my scriptures everyday if it hadn't really changed me? Not changed my health or my body, but changed me, my soul, my spirit? So I picked one goal. One thing that mattered. My new year's resolution for 2017 was to not withhold love. It has kicked my butt, but in a good butt-kicking way, in a way that it needed to be kicked.

I learned that there are SO many ways to withhold love: when people annoy me, when family members hurt me, when my children are bullied, when I am jealous, when someone dismisses or even laughs at my opinions just to name a few. This week.

Last year, after a few months of this goal, I started to feel a little beat up and far less than perfect. That's when God sent me a message. I was at a conference and one of the presenters was a woman who my college boyfriend had dumped me for. I was hoping she was fat, not very interesting, and maybe just a little bit bald. She wasn't. She was beautiful, articulate, captivating, everything I felt like I wasn't.

That night when I checked in with Heavenly Father, I realized that once again I had withheld love for this sister in a big way. After I finished what I hoped was a full, sincere, heartfelt repentance, Heavenly Father said to me, "There's one more thing you need to repent of--withholding love from yourself. You are every bit as bright and beautiful and loved by me as that woman." That's when I learned, although I had been told and taught a jillion times in dozens of Sunday School classes, that I can't love others if I don't love myself.

That's why my resolution for 2018 is to not withhold love. It may be an "old" resolution, but it will make me a new person.

President Thomas S. Monson, a great example of love.