Did your recent resolutions lead you to find treasure?

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.  Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

— Joseph Campbell

Resolving to change begins the journey.  But sometimes we stumble along the way.  At the beginning of the Lenten Season, I wrote “Easter Sunday seems soooo far off… but when the time comes to look backwards, I’d like to know that I’d truly leveraged this opportunity, that I’d transformed these six weeks into “a time of growth and renewal.”  At the time, I set out with three intentions:

• Growth and renewal
• Cleaning out the clutter in my house as well as my mind
• Reflection and prayer

Tempering Aspiration with Tolerance

Well those six weeks flew by and now I’m asking myself: How’d ya’ do?

Well, by the last week of Lent I was stumbling up the pathway, angry at the world, angry with myself, out of sorts, and just plain grumpy! Why? Because I’d begun judging myself quite harshly – I was seeing the vast vistas of intentions “not done yet” and I was intolerantly deeming my “puny” efforts as “not enough”.  And so, instead of feeling some sense of accomplishment, I was disgruntled, frustrated and unhappy. I saw the “TO DO List” looming large, towering over my seemingly miniscule TA DA DONE List…

Until, that is, I made the conscious effort to actually tally up all that I had gotten done during that time period. When I got “up close and personal” I discovered that the TA DA DONE List was more significant than I’d first thought and, given the six week timeframe, perhaps I might dub it quite satisfactory.  (Even if I do say so myself.)

Be good to yourself. Listen to your body, to your heart. We’re very hard on ourselves, and we’re always feeling like we’re not doing enough. It’s a terribly hard job.

— Marcia Wallace

Gradually I’m making peace with the tension that exists between intention and realistic expectations.  I’m learning and growing… becoming somehow more tolerant and more demanding.  (Another set of mutually exclusive conditions, sigh…) And even though my journey advances with starts, stops and spurts, I’ll count the forward movement as progress and keep moving onward.

New Beginnings

Let every day be the first day of the rest of your life,
but especially let today be a new beginning.

— Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Now I know: “What I didn’t get done” simply sketches out the path ahead. And like all good works of art, the finished product will become both less and more than I thought it would or could be… And so I continue.  I do some and then, with my newly “finished” product before me, I begin again with a new thumbnail sketch.  One step at a time.

Again and again, I begin.

No river can return to its source, yet all rivers must have a beginning.

— Native American Proverb

What about you – if you made a resolution that your May 2011 would be different because you made personal growth and renewal your theme for the prior six weeks – how’d ya’ do?