Goals, Not Resolutions

Goals, Not Resolutions

      New Year's Eve and New Year's Day used to be some of my favorite days of the year.  New Year's Eve would be spent with family and friends, and lots of food.  Each year we would have so many different snack foods.  New Year's Day would be filled with Pork, sauerkraut, dumplings, and mashed potatoes.  It was a time of reflection and resolutions.  But all that changed January 1st of 2025.  I was entering my first new year without my wife, and my soul felt crushed.  A deep, dark, looming cloud of depression hung over my head.  I felt so defeated.  Grief had exhausted me, it torn my heart into so many small pieces.  It was a different New Years.  The new year typically had a way of arriving with noise.  There would be fireworks, noise makers, and for those of us in Pennsylvania people would shot a random shot into the air at midnight.  You would hear words like “New year, new you”, or "fresh start", or for those that are grieving "time to move on.”

      For those that are grieving, those phrases can feel hollow—or even cruel.  We understand that people mean well when they say it.  They aren't intentionally trying to hurt us or wound us, but their words cut just the same.  We didn’t choose this new life. We didn’t set a goal to grieve, to learn how to sleep alone, or to become experts in survival. Loss forced us onto a road we never planned to walk.  We didn't choose how to relearn finances, parenting, work, hobbies, and a total realignment of our life.  That’s why I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions anymore.  Resolutions are often built on pressure.  This year I'm focusing on goals instead, because goals can be built on grace.

      Why do goals matter more than resolutions? Resolutions tend to demand instant transformation: Do better. Be stronger. Fix yourself.  Get fit.  Get to the gym.  Fit into this outfit.  But grief doesn’t work that way.  There is not 'mchealing' to grief (a fast approach to getting over grief).  Healing is slow, sometimes painfully so. Faith is often quiet. Hope sometimes arrives in whispers, not fireworks.  Those whispers sometimes are so quiet that you can't hear them at first.  Goals allow room for where you actually are—not where others think you should be.

      A verse that I'm carrying into the new year is Psalm 147:3, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”  Notice the word binds. That’s careful, patient work.  The image is both medical and knitting.  God is patiently, precisely,  and passionately putting our hearts back together.  For those that are grieving we need to know that we are a lifetime work in progress.  I don't believe our grieving heart will ever be fully healed on this side of heaven, and that's ok.  So long as our hurting heart is being held by the Father.

      There are certain goals that widowers, or anyone grieving for that matter, can aim for.  These aren’t goals to impress anyone. They’re goals to help you breathe again.  They aren't goals that you can track like weight loss, time spent in a gym, or the money that you saved during the year.  These goals might not be able to be tracked right away, they might be so small at first that they will be unnoticed by everyone, including ourselves, but they are goals worth pursing.

      Our first goal should be to be honest with God in our prayer life.  Grief has a way of taking the mask off of prayer.  Prior to losing Tiffanie my prayer life was often predictable, mechanical, rigid, and I would even describe it as woody.  God is not looking for polish prayers, not church-language prayers, but instead honest ones.  Angry ones. Confused ones. Silent ones.

  Psalm 38:18 says that "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” God doesn’t recoil from your pain. He draws near to it.  If your only prayer this year is, “Lord, I don’t know how to do this,” that’s enough.  The Lord hears that prayer just as well as the long prayer said in a chapel.

      A second goal that I need to make personally is to take better care of my body.  Grief lives in the body as much as the heart.  My grief journey has changed me physically.  I have lost weight and gained weight.  I tried extensive exercise and I've tried extensive rest.  I have tried to eat salad with lean proteins and at other times I have downed an entire tube of cookie dough in one sitting.  For those of us that are grieving we need to retrain our body and we need to make our health a priority.  But it can be hard to take those first steps, but those first steps can be baby steps.  Things like eating something nourishing, cutting down on sugar, elminating one soda a day, going for a small walk, go to the doctor, get some sleep, possibly even get on anxiety medical for your mental health.  This isn’t about self-improvement—it’s stewardship.  God has given us a body to take care of, and, as much as we hate to admit it, we aren't typically doing a good job with it.  Paul wrote,“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19)."  Caring for yourself is not a betrayal of your spouse. It’s an act of faith that your life still matters.

      Another huge goal for those that are grieving as we step into the new year is to stay connected.  Widowhood and grief in general isolates. Even well-meaning people don’t know what to say.  Still—don’t disappear.  One trusted friend.  One support group.  One safe place to tell the truth.  For you reading this consider me a safe place.  This ministry, Sons of the Shepherd, was birthed so grieving people wouldn't have to do life alone.  That they would find someone willing to sit with them on their darkest days.  Galatians says “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."  Who better to help you bear your burden then a brother or sister in Christ?  You were never meant to grieve alone.

      Another practical, but hard goal is to keep moving foward.  You will read that phrase move forward often in my writings.  I will never write move on.  You don't simply move on from the person you love.  Notice I didn't say loveD.  You will always love that person, past, present, and future.  As you step into a new year you can find ways to remember them without guilt or shame.  How can you do that?  Tell their story.  Say their name.  Create room for joy and sorrow to co-exist.  Jesus Himself said in the Beattitudes that “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted (Matthew 5:4)."  Mourning is not weakness—it’s love with nowhere to go.

      A huge goal for each person grieving is to allow hope to grow.  Hope doesn’t mean forgetting.  Hope means believing God is not finished.  The weeping prophet Jeremiah wrote “For I know the plans I have for you… plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11)."  Those are powerful words coming from a man whose nation was crumbling.  He tells a crumbling nation to have hope, and God's Word can telling a crumbling person to have hope too.  That future may look different than the one you imagined—but different does not mean empty.

      If you’re a widower or grieving someone and you are reading this, hear me clearly, you don’t need to reinvent yourself.  You don’t need to rush healing.  You don’t need to pretend you’re okay.  Set goals that leave room for grace.  Set goals that honor your grief and your God.  Set just one goal and show yourself such amazing grace. And if all you can manage this year is to keep showing up—breathing, believing, and trusting Jesus one day at a time—that is not failure.  That is faith, and that is all the Lord asks for.