Jenn over at “Mommy Needs Coffee” posted a unique challenge. Instead of a list of resolutions (or as I like to call it, a premature list of failures), just summarize all your resolutions in one word. one. (like bloggers can ever type just one word. Pass me that bag of Lays potato chips.) It’s like a theme for the year. I came up with my word pretty quick.
closure.
from everything to damaged relationships to home projects to the purging of excess stuff from my house to the learning of new software for work to . . . just closure. I wondered how that word came to me so quickly and then I remembered. A book. (anyone who knows me is thinking, “what else?”) I started it sometime mid 2006 and it’s been sitting in my “reading spot” (low in the stack) ever since. I got busy reading to learn (again). It’s a book called “Guilt Free Living” by Robert Jeffress. He talks about closure extensively and says:
“closure is the feeling that you have done everything that needs to be done at that time. Therefore you are free to relax and enjoy yourself without any guilt.”
This is a Christian based book and I wrote more about it on my devotions blog, but non-Christians, don’t freak out. If I can read a non-Christian book and filter it through my Christian perspective, non-Christians can read a Christian book and filter it through their own perspective. There’s a LOT of good stuff in here. Like Marcia K. Hornok’s paraphrase of Psalm 23:
The clock is my dictator, I shall not rest
It makes me lie down only when exhausted
It leads me to deep depression, it hounds my soul
It leads me in circles of frenzy for activities sake.
Even though I run frantically from task to task,
I will never get it all done, for my “ideal” is with me
Deadlines and my need for approval, they drive me.
They demand performance from me, beyond the limits of my schedule.
They anoint my head with migraines, my in-basket overflows.
Surely fatigue and time pressure shall follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the bonds of frustration forever.
closure.
what’s your word?