My resolution.

This year, I dare to live a life of extravagant happiness.
I will live.
I will give 101%.
I will strive to understand before I am understood.
I will live fully, laugh often, and love always.
I will love my life and the people in it, because that's exactly where God wants me.

I don't think it's possible to live with no regrets. I think there will always be things I regret. I think I will always get to the end of a year and look back and wish I could have done a few things differently. I'm not always going to be fully satisfied with my own attempts at perfection, but that's because I'm not perfect.

To put it the way Jon Acuff does -- "I don't want the best of what [Hannah Dokupil] is capable. That’s small and tiny and insignificant. I want to experience the best of what God is capable. A supernatural God who breathed life into me and set the stars in place and moves with as much mystery and creativity as he did when he wrote a message on the wall for a king or burned a talking bush for a prophet."

I don't want to be satisfied by my own efforts. I want to be satisfied by a God who is greater than I am.

I'm not making new years resolutions this year, because I always fail them. I'm not going to resolve to be anything that I'm not. I'm not going to raise my own expectations so high I can't reach them. I simply am going to be. I'm going to live, and I'm going to learn. When I get to the end of 2012, I'm going to say that this year, I grew.

This new year, tell me,

What is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

(the summer day / Mary Oliver)

I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.

— Shauna Niequist

I'm going to live.

I was thinking about my life today (something I do rather frequently) and realizing that I really don't think I'm putting a whole lot of effort into living.

It's just...mediocre.

I give halfhearted little glances at everything because I'm not sure what I want to be "my thing." You know?

For years I've wanted to find what my passion was and throw myself into it wholeheartedly.

But maybe....maybe I don't have one. Maybe I don't have just one calling. Besides, what's to stop me from doing everything that I do passionately and wholeheartedly? I don't have to just do one thing.

One of my first impromptu topics was a completely weird quote that went: "If you bite off more than you can chew, chew it." I talked, in a rather jumbled fashion, about how sometimes I end up doing too much stuff and over committing myself, but I have to chew it anyway.

But I've started to realize that I'm shying away from "chewing" what I've got. I'm afraid of throwing myself into everything I do because I'm afraid of what I might lose.

I'm afraid to enjoy life because I'm afraid those joys might be taken away.

But what's the alternative? Hiding in a corner and holding it all to myself? Never sharing, never loving, never learning?

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” -CS Lewis.

I don't want to be irredeemable.

So here's my resolution.

Everything that I do -- speech, debate, piano, flute, guitar, music teaching, awana, quizzing, music theory, chinese, math, SAT, writing, reading, cleaning, organizing, sciences, history, playing with my dog, hanging with my brothers, doing the laundry, working on Aslan's Country, talking to my friends, -- everything -- I am going throw all of myself into.

I'm not going to shy away from creativity. I'm not going to worry about making the best or being the best. I'm just going to be.

And I'm going to give 101%. I'm going to seek the truth, and I'm going to find it. I'm going to be daring and adventurous. I'm going to do crazy things and laugh till my stomach hurts. I'm going to find what I love about my life and I'm going to do it over and over again. I'm going to discover what it is that makes me me.

I'm not going to be idle. I'm not going to be mediocre. I'm not going to be afraid of what I might lose, I'm just going to go for it.

I used to hate all those cliches - live, love, laugh. Follow your heart. Dreams can come true. Just believe. Be yourself.

But I'm starting to love what is normal. It's okay to embrace what everyone else does sometimes. There's a reason everyone else loves it. I don't have to be anti-mainstream all the time. I don't have to be a world changer. As my dear friend Gray says, "there is power in being common."

So yes. I'm going to live, love, and laugh. I'm going to chase my dreams, and believe with everything in me.

I'm going to live.

Freedom.

This is the most freeing message I have heard in a very, very long time.

Tomorrow I'll stop procrastinating.

When I was little, I used to try to have "perfect" days. I would try to be good for the entire day.

It never worked. =P

So, at the end of the day, I always said to myself, "I'll try again tomorrow. I'll really do it this time."

And as I got older, I somehow kept that mentality. The idea that one day, it would suddenly happen - BOOM - I'd have life figured out.

Lately I've been frustrated with the fact that...I'm no different than I was 10 years ago. I still say "tomorrow I'll be different. Tomorrow I'll actually not check my email and I'll actually practice piano instead."

::snort::

I have a feeling I'd be a much better pianist if I'd ever actually put that idea into practice. (haaa see that clever use of a pun there? I actually didn't intend that.)

But really - I would say to myself as I went to bed "ugh! I failed again. But I won't fail tomorrow."

Isn't "tomorrow I'll stop procrastinating" an oxymoron?

As your stereotypical homeschooler saturated by the message of the Rebelution, I've had the idea that if I didn't do great things as a teenager, I've somehow wasted my entire life. I frowned upon my 18th birthday and felt as if my opportunities had all been taken away now that the number associated with my years of living is one higher than it was a month ago.

But the reality is - I will never have more time than I do right now.

I'm only going to be 18 once. Just for 365 days. Why ruin it by wishing it was something else?



Maybe tomorrow I'll start over
Maybe tomorrow I will finally change my ways
Said the same things yesterday
Don't know why I'm so afraid
To let you in
To let you win
To let you have all of me

Can't spend my whole life wastin'
Everything I know I've been given
'Cause you've made for so much more than
Sittin' on the side lines
I don't wanna look back and wonder
If good enough could've been better
Everyday's a day to start over
So, why am I waiting for tomorrow?

I don't want to look back and wonder if my "good enough" could have been better. I want to live life to the fullest, and not waste my time worrying about wasting my life. I'm going to get out there, do something, and live! And I'm going to do it today.

It's revolutionary, and it will change the world.

Lately, I've been looking at this overwhelming problem of the world I live in.

Going through a typical week, with all the people I encounter and all the experiences I have, I keep seeing the brokenness of the world.

The homeless man on the street. That girl sitting all by herself at lunch. Those 10 year olds in awana who don't understand who God is. Those news stories about murders. Discussing politics. Working to keep up with my school work. Trying to learn more about the world.

My head spins thinking of how many problems there are in the world, how many people need help - and I want to do something about it.

I want to change the world, and I want to make a difference for the kingdom of God. I want to be radical, crazy, different, a world-changer.

But the other day, I heard this (ridiculously simple) statement:

You don't have to solve the world's problems.

Huh?

Oh right, I'm not God.

But I was also reminded of this story:

One day, a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean.

Approaching the boy, he asked, "What are you doing?"

The youth replied, "Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them back, they'll die."

"Son," the man said, "don't you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can't make a difference!"

After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf.

Then, smiling at the man, he said, "I made a difference for that one."

A lot of times I'm overwhelmed with all the things there are to do. How do I know what I'm supposed to do, and how am I supposed to make a difference?

Unlike some of my friends, who have been called off to places like Argentina, Peru, Russia, and China -- or even to direct Awana, minister to youth, serve in church -- I'm not really sure what I'm called to do, or how exactly I can make a difference.

But there are places I can make a difference right here.

I can watch that lego movie with my little brother.

I can help my brother with his speech.

I can not brush them off when they have questions.

I can do the dishes for my mom so she can take a nap.

I can not be on the computer so I can be available for something else.

I can give my dad a hug when he comes home.

I can send an email to a friend just because.

I can make a difference, and I don't need to change the whole world. Great things start small, and if I can make a difference in one person's life, God can turn that into something bigger in His timing and strength.

In which I blog to myself.

Okay, so I think I'd better clarify a few things. First off, the actual quote is not "idiot" it's "insanity" (although the two are very closely related =D ) Second of all....I guess..hmm. I got a lot of comments from people about how I shouldn't be degrading myself or labeling myself as a certain way. That's not really what I'm doing...just identifying a certain type of behavior that God has convicted me of.

Idiot: Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.

I was thinking. How do we expect to live lives for Jesus, changed lives, lives of radical surrender and love for Him if we're not willing to give anything up? If we're not willing to stop doing what we are doing and start doing what He wants us to do? If we continually keep the same habits, same ideas, refusing to let go of the sin that keeps hold of us....will we ever get different results? Will we ever be changed? Of course not.

I like to plan. I like to plan a lot. But I'm not so good at sticking to that plan. (But I'm really good at the planning.) So I plan, I plan, and I say, okay, I'm going to do this at this time so that I can do this next and then this....but never actually get it done. Yet I still expect that "this time will be different" or "I'll get it right this time".

I've been doing this since I was 7 years old. (Like I said, I'm pretty good at planning.)

I cling to perfection, to thinking I can do it my way, that if I just try one more time, I can get it right on my own.

What?

Maybe Hannah needs to hear this again.

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.

Or the harsher one, that cuts a lot deeper,

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

Really, Hannah?

The only way we can live radical lives for God is if we let Him change us, if we let go of our own plans, the things we stick to like glue the things we want to keep and hold onto forever, little things we try over and over again in attempt to do it ourselves, saying "God, let me try just one more time. I think I can get it this time." I cling to things that are the same. I don't like to let things I do go because if I do, it makes me vulnerable, and it makes me disorganized, and it makes me the weaker one.

But...I am the weaker one. God is the stronger one. He is the one whose plan actually matters. He is the one who can bring things to pass...not me. Since when did my agenda work? It didn't work when I was 7 and it doesn't work when I'm 17, and it won't work when I'm 27 or 57 or 97.

We can't live the lives we live in sin and expect that God will just give us what we want, or that we'll have a nice life, or that God will give us big, important responsibilities. We can't say we've been changed by God, that we're living our lives for Him when we refuse to even let Him change the way we think and live.

I have to allow Him to break down the walls I hide behind, to radically change the way I live, for there to be fruit.

The ideal, the concept of change, of doing things for God's glory is so easy and nice to imagine and get excited about. But it's such a completely different thing to allow God to work that in my life.

By the aforementioned definition, I have the habits of one who is an idiot. Or insane. Or however you call it.

Oh, Praise God for His endless grace.

Motivation

I've been thinking a lot about commitment, goals, and the weight of my words and actions. (this is a new years post, just so you know. =P )

Lately, I've been taking advantage of the fact that I'm really really good at doing things last minute.

I don't say that to brag. In fact it's a terrible weakness of mine.

I can memorize my speech the night before the tournament and still do well.
I can study new vocab right before taking the test and remember it.
I have fabulous short-term memory.
Basically, I can learn quickly. I can also rattle of said learned information and sound like I know what I'm talking about.

In the past couple years, though, I haven't really internalized much of what I've learned. That's not to say that I haven't learned anything, but that a lot of my life has been lived on the surface.

I could go into a lot more here, and I will in a later post. But lately I've been thinking about everything I say as if I was binding myself into a legal contract.

A couple weeks ago, I was challenged by the speaker in awana who was talking about how she made the commitment when she was 12 years old to read her Bible every day for at least 5 minutes a day.

At first I thought this kind of weird. Then I thought again. And I found it a rather brilliant idea.

So I wrote up a little piece of paper stating my commitment, signed it, put it in an envelope, and stuck it in my Bible.

I have now committed to reading my Bible at least 5 minutes every single day for the rest of my life.

One person I talked to was slightly taken aback at first.

"Isn't that kind of a lofty goal?"

I mean, you know, we all make New Years' resolutions, and almost half of them are unreachable ideals that we set to make ourselves feel better, or at least so that at the end of the year we can say "well, I tried."

But if you think about it, that's such a tiny little commitment. 5 minutes a day. Out of how many minutes in our crazy days?

And what else does Christ ask of us but for the rest of my life? I say my life is committed to Christ, but what does that mean?

Well, for me, it means that every day for the rest of my life, I am going to spend time reading His word.

It's kind of big, but if you think about it, it's really rather small. Yet this is what God asks of us.

Since then, it's been crazy how impactful the idea of my signature on that piece of paper is.

That means if I miss one single day, I've broken my commitment: one I made to Christ. That's pretty huge, you know.

I don't have many goals for the coming new year. (2011. Isn't that kind of scary?) But one of my goals this year is to reach all my goals. How about that?

So often we make them just to make us feel better, to sort of put us in an ambitious mindset in hopes of reaching the perfect ideal. As if writing it down is going to magically make it happen.

Since I've been so good at doing things last minute, the concept of working for something is sort of hard to grasp sometimes. But that really hit home to me when I went to Nats last year. [see my Nationals tag for more about that] Learning what it means to work hard for a goal and to reach it.

One of my friends pointed out that I'm really goal oriented. I never really thought of myself as particularly this way, but the more I think about it, the more it's true. When I set my mind to something, I really do do it. The fact is that I haven't been setting my mind to very much...just sort of flitting around and only halfway setting my mind to things.

So here's to the New Year: setting my mind on knowing Christ - and actually reaching my goals. My goal is to be committed. To my friends, my family, my schoolwork, and my Savior. What are your goals?