2017 — Your Year in Review

Post on 31 December, 2017 by Dallin Malmgren

            I know, how pre­sump­tu­ous! Like I have any insight at all into your 2017. Actu­al­ly, the title is just a hook. It was sparked by the real­iza­tion that this is some­thing I need to do. It’s a tired metaphor, but life real­ly is a jour­ney. Con­sid­er the end of each cal­en­dar year a mile­stone, or at least a sign­post. A time for reflection—think of your­self on a bus or a train, watch­ing fields and towns and tele­phone poles go by. But as you look out the win­dow, you also see your own face. Exam­ine it.

So where to start this review? Health seems a good place. That may come across as self-absorbed, but is it real­ly? How you feel affects every oth­er cat­e­go­ry in this inven­to­ry. Take stock. What did you weigh at the begin­ning of this year and what do you weigh now? (Up from 189 to 194 for me…sigh)   What meds are you tak­ing, then and now? A sad truth—there are some issues of health you have lit­tle con­trol over. If you have the flu, you feel like crap and there’s not much you can do about it. Or worse things than the flu. The best I can offer is give it to God and live with it. But we can focus on those areas over which we have some con­trol: diet and exer­cise and atti­tude. In assess­ing our health, per­spec­tive is an impor­tant key—we’re not look­ing for glo­ri­fied bod­ies, we’re look­ing for improvement.

Next on my list are my rela­tion­ships. Obvi­ous­ly, fam­i­ly comes to mind first. I know there is a world of dys­func­tion out there so it’s not an absolute truth, but still…God teach­es us uncon­di­tion­al love by giv­ing us chil­dren. But how does that play out in real life? It’s cer­tain­ly not an invi­ta­tion to license and indul­gence, but it’s not spare the rod and spoil the child either. Remem­ber the incred­i­ble joy and hope and promise we felt at the moment of birth? How are we doing with that these days? Uncon­di­tion­al love is not how I would char­ac­ter­ize my mar­i­tal relationship—but it should be. (“Hus­bands, love your wives as Christ loves the church…” Eph. 5:25) Mar­riage is the real school of love. You can’t fake it, you are going to have nit­ty grit­ty moments, it goes way deep­er than feel­ings, and it will involve self-sac­ri­fice. (My per­son­al assess­ment: after 40 years, I think I’ve moved some­where between kinder­garten and first grade—but I’m still hap­pi­ly enrolled.) I haven’t even men­tioned extend­ed fam­i­ly or friends or peo­ple from your past that you have neglect­ed. (Note to self: future blog on relationships)

I used to tell my stu­dents the two most impor­tant choic­es (non-spir­i­tu­al) that they would make would be who they chose to live their lives with and what they chose to do. The word career encom­pass­es a lot of dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties today. (If you are at peace with your career, you can skip this para­graph.) If you wake up each day dread­ing your life because you have to go to work, you need to con­sid­er a career change. Three fac­tors com­prise an accept­able career to me: 1—can you sup­port your­self doing what you’re doing? 2—are you mak­ing some sort of con­tri­bu­tion to the world doing it? 3—are you con­tent? If the answer to any ques­tion is no, you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to change jobs, but you might pay atten­tion for warn­ing flags. Career changes rarely hap­pen magically—start with small steps.

A relat­ed area to exam­ine, espe­cial­ly as you get old­er, is your finances. I know peo­ple who are old and poor, and it is a dif­fi­cult life. Mis­for­tune can be a cause, but it can also be a choice. There is a con­stant bat­tle going   on in everybody’s bank­book: debt vs. sav­ings. You have to be able to find a bal­ance (we Malm­grens are noto­ri­ous­ly frugal—God is work­ing with me on that). In your self-exam­i­na­tion, if you find you are more in debt than you were a year ago, I hope you know why. (“It just hap­pened…” or “Oh well…” are not accept­able rea­sons. Finances can be a source of tremen­dous stress—stay on top of it.

I spend a lot of time play­ing golf. I have no prob­lem with that—golf is a spir­i­tu­al exer­cise (real­ly). But I know time is a resource I need to exam­ine. I also care pas­sion­ate­ly about sports: bas­ket­ball (Spurs), foot­ball (fan­ta­sy), and golf (oh, to be able to play like that!) On a more con­fes­sion­al lev­el, I also watch cer­tain sit­com reruns. These pas­times veer dan­ger­ous­ly close into that area known as “a waste of time.” Peo­ple need to have “me” time—periods they can do what they feel like regard­less of intrin­sic val­ue. But I have a help­ful res­o­lu­tion as regards this resource: give more of your time to oth­ers. My friend Mike Ball once told me, con­cern­ing his retire­ment, “I try to make sure I do at least one nice thing for some­one else every day.” A noble aspiration.

One last item on my inven­to­ry: our souls. Jesus said: “What does it prof­it a man if he gains the whole world and los­es his own soul?” I don’t want this to turn into a ser­mon, only an encour­age­ment. Tend to your soul like a gar­den. It will blos­som and grow.

Whew. These self-exam­i­na­tions are not an easy business…kind of like putting your­self through a meat grinder. But I sus­pect the next step might be even harder—how am I going to change?

Comments

  • Reply

    Thank you…needed this:) Hap­py New Year? May you be blessed with a hap­py and Healthy 2018;))

    Anonymous31 December, 2017

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