What does it take to change your life? -when it is clear that you need to change it?
Tis the season for making resolutions. Plans for change in our lives. Goals, objectives. But I am going to guess that a lot of us are more than a bit skeptical about making resolutions, because so often they get put by the wayside, ignored, lost in the shuffle. Resolutions that seemed shiny and compelling in January begin to fade and wilt in March. Or maybe even in January…
Perhaps another way to making changes in our lives would be to look at its process. And making resolutions or declarations is only one piece of it.
One of my very favorite sayings of Jesus is found in Matthew 12. And I think it is useful for stimulating deeper consideration of the process of making changes in our lives. He made this statement in an era when pretty much everybody believed that invisible spirits could enter into a person and take control of them. It was a folk explanation for mental illness and spiritual distress. Jesus got a reputation as a healer partly because of the stories about him driving evil spirits out of people, bringing afflicted people back to spiritual and emotional and social wholeness. So this passage has to be understood in that historical context:
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but it finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ When it returns, it finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.”
Such a rich and even funny description of how life goes, eh? Anybody who has suffered from addiction understands this story right away. So you get clean and sober. Then what? How do you fill the space that drugs or alcohol used to occupy? If you don’t fill that space, relapse is more likely – a relapse maybe worse than the mess you were in just before you got clean and sober.
The image of the first evil spirit inviting seven others to occupy the house – familiar, isn’t it? Like the house down the street where the owner left town and let a deadbeat relative move in, and that person decides to bring in a bunch of sketchy pals as roommates, and the next thing you know, the house is a public nuisance.
In this earthy, vivid story, Jesus lays out a path for us to follow in making needed changes in our lives.
Step one, get clear about the change you want to make. The resolution, the goal, the objective. But make that resolution at the very same time that you commit yourself to making room for it. Your resolution has to have a corollary. A companion resolution that you’ll do what you need to do to make the ultimate resolution possible. And usually that involves exactly what Jesus described in his pithy story. It involves housecleaning. It involves letting go. Making room. And letting go is usually just as hard, if not harder, than achieving your resolution! So you resolve to take art classes in 2024 – great! But in all likelihood, the reason you haven’t taken art classes already is because your life is full. What activity, what existing engagements, will you commit to abandoning in order to make room for the art classes? Get specific. Count the cost of your resolution, factor it in.
And likewise, if your resolution is to clean your spiritual or physical house, what’s your plan for filling the hole that will result? You retire because you’re worn out from working at your job. But what will replace that job? What will fill the void that opens up? You don’t want the devil’s roommates to move into the empty spaces in your life. You gotta have a plan for what to do with your life.
So our new year’s resolutions have to have companion resolutions. A resolution to give something up needs to be accompanied by a resolution about how to replace it. A resolution to do something new needs to be accompanied by a resolution to let go of something else in order to make room for the new commitment. Otherwise our January resolutions will get left in the dust by Valentine’s Day.
So what do you resolve to give up in 2024, and how do you resolve to replace it? And what do you resolve to take on in 2024, and what do you resolve to give up in order to do it?