Every January, we’re handed the same script.
Lose weight.
Drink less.
Pray more.
I’ve already received an email asking, “Chuck, what do you resolve to do beginning on January 1?” And they’ll gladly sell me their book on bettering myself.
New Year’s resolutions are often built on sheer willpower, even mind over matter.
YOU CAN DO THIS the headline reads, with 20 people on gym bicycles at 5:30am. But you’re just trying to catch a few extra minutes of sleep at that time after your kid comes wandering in saying, “Mommy, is it morning yet?”
And the subtle message if you fail at resolving to be your best you? Shame on you for not trying harder.
This can’t be it, friends.
What if the deeper invitation of the new year isn’t exhausting effort, but attunement?
Not pushing through, but listening deeply?
From Resolutions to Longings
Resolutions ask: What should I do differently this year?
Longings ask: What is stirring within me?
And that’s not a small shift.
In the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t offer transformation-by-checklist. Rather, he offers a Beatitude vision of the kind of happy (read: flourishing and whole)person you can become by taking the unlikeliest path: surrender, grief, humility, desire, mercy, integrity, shalom, and security. And throughout his public ministry, Jesus asks one sort of question, over and over—a question so simple and so disarming that you might miss it while looking for to-do lists:
“What do you want?”
No, it’s a not a ‘what do you want for Christmas’ kind of question. It’s asking: At your depths, what you most deeply long for?
And it’s an invitation to begin anew, not in wearying willpower but soul-empowering grace.
Grace and Desire
The great early church saint Augustine once mused, “The desire for grace is the beginning of grace.” I read it like this: Grace isn’t passive.
We too often juxtapose will and grace, as if the latter is passive. It’s not. Augustine reminds us that the wide open field of grace reveals itself in-and-through our desires. After all, as he famously said elsewhere, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.”
CS Lewis said something similar: longing is a signal, a homing beacon, an echo of Eden. It’s a reminder that your heart still pulses within, that beneath the mad and mundane of your everyday life is a hunger for goodness.
Grace awakens in your heart as desire, as you tap into an underground current, one that never stops flowing even if you live unaware of it.
What if tuning in was the call of the new year?
Working With the Body, Not Against It
This posture of longing doesn’t just make theological sense, it makes physiological sense.
So much of our resolution-making assumes that our bodies are obstacles to overcome. If we could just outthink our anxiety, override our exhaustion, or push past our limits, then we’d finally become the people we want to be.
“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” my Mom used to say. By late January or early February, however, we’ve only lost momentum and found exhaustion.
But our nervous systems don’t change through force. And our longings don’t awaken in the fight-or-flight hustle of chronic sympathetic nervous system activation.
Our hearts awaken amidst the tender conditions of safety, attunement, and connection, as I’ve written about in Healing What’s Within. Here, connected to our nervous system’s “Home” state, as I call it, psyche and soma unite in a dance of desire, opening us to goodness, to hope, even to the kinds of internally-aligned choices that manifest in deep and lasting change.
How do I retune to Home? you ask. Consider:
- Where do I notice a gentle inner yes…in my body, not just my thoughts?
- What does my heart most need right now…connection, rest, belonging, meaning, dignity?
- What relationships or practices give me life…and which quietly drain it?
- Which choices reflect my truest self, and which are coping strategies in disguise?
- What is the one core thing I long for amidst the many things that demand my attention?
- What is one small, faithful step today that honors my heart, body, and mind?
Not ten sure-fire steps. Not a mind-over-matter plan to change your life in 30 days.
But tender, gentle, attuned movements of listening attentively and acting intentionally.
This is the kind of inner spiritual and emotional formation that works with us in both body and soul, not against us.
A Different Way Into the New Year
Like some of you, I live under the weight of all the should’s.
I should put that Planet Fitness membership we have to good use and get to the gym more regularly, I should manage my time better, I should clean up my inbox every week, I should stop snacking in the evenings, I should commit to justice-keeping and peace-making in concrete ways, and I should save more money.
I feel the anxious churn underneath, even the whispers of, “The calendar is turning—now’s your chance, Chuck!”
Resolutions often collapse under the weight of unrealistic expectations. Longings, by contrast, are sustainable. They meet us where we actually are. This is reflected in the spiritual practice of creating a Rule of Life, which (ironically) isn’t about hard-and-fast rules at all, but about stepping into what we long for and what aligns most deeply with our hearts and values in various areas—our relationships, our work, our justice-keeping, our body-tending, our everyday spending, our hobbies, and more.
Imagine that list I just shared articulated as longing:
- I long to inhabit my body with greater care and vitality, moving in ways that help me feel grounded and alive.
- I long for my days to feel more spacious and intentional, rather than hurried and fragmented.
- I long for clarity and lightness in my work life, releasing what no longer needs my constant attention.
- I long to end my days feeling settled and nourished, not reaching for food to soothe exhaustion or unease.
- I long to live with a steady commitment to justice and peace, expressed through faithful, concrete practices rather than abstract ideals.
- I long for a deeper sense of sufficiency and trust, so that money becomes a tool for freedom rather than a source of anxiety.
Imagine, then, awakening each day to these longings, with attention and intention given to living in alignment with them. Instead of awakening to a list, I’m awakening to my heart.
If, as Augustine says, “the desire for grace is the beginning of grace,” then when my actions don’t match my deepest longings, I don’t beat myself up—I return to my longings.
It’s a posture I adopted for myself more than 25 years ago, not after reading some self-help book, but after reading theologian Cornelius Plantinga’s stirring book on sin, of all things. There are few passages I’ve quoted more over the years than this one from the book:
“What does a spiritually whole person look like? A spiritually whole person longs in certain classical ways. She longs for God and the beauty of God, for Christ and Christlikeness, for the power of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual health itself—and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of the way of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.” – Cornelius Plantinga, Not The Way It’s Supposed To Be: A Breviary On Sin
It’s an extraordinary vision. But notice what he doesn’t say—he doesn’t say, “When her longings dim, she beats herself up for not doing better.” Rather, Plantinga says, “she longs to long again.”
Such grace. Even for you, and even when the best laid plans seem to fail.
Perhaps the most faithful question in this season isn’t: What should I change?
But rather:
What is my heart quietly longing for?
