Simply surviving is a worthy goal

You did it!

You made it through 2020, a year like no other we’ve experienced. Maybe you were like me, staying up until midnight on New Year’s Eve for the first time in years, wanting to make sure the year got on out of here and shedding tears of relief when it did. Maybe you were understandably too tired to care or too convinced that 2021 would just be a second verse, same as the first, since nothing substantial changed overnight on December 31.

However you skidded into 2021, it is upon us. And it’s typical at the outset of a new year to set goals: what are the areas of your life that are within your control and in which you’d like to see progress or change? What are the differences you’d like to see, and what are the steps toward them?

I am a big fan of goals. They are arrows with ropes attached that you aim at targets, and once you’ve lodged your arrow, you can pull yourself forward using the rope. Goals keep us focused and motivated. Goals keep us aligned with our purpose.

There are no minimums or maximums on goal size, though. Your objective might be to get out of bed every morning, or it might be to become president of the United States. Both aspirations have merit. And it’s worth noting that when life is chewing you up, it can feel as impossible to get out of bed as to become Commander in Chief.

So if you are hanging on by your fingertips, more exhausted than you’ve ever been, unsure what the future of your ministry (or ministry period) looks like, bracing for the deaths of beloved people because of the post-holiday Covid surge, dealing with the grumbles of those who are nonetheless clamoring at the church doors for in-person worship, worried about what the election that somehow hasn’t ended yet (in the minds of some) might still bring, jonesing for human connection or waiting on the hot second your kids will return to daycare or school, and staring down the barrel of Lent in just a few weeks, simply surviving mentally and emotionally as well as physically is a real feat and a worthy goal. You don’t have to map out the next three months, much less the next three years. You don’t have to beat yourself up - please don’t! - for not meeting your normal-time standards. You don’t have to possess all the answers.

Really, January 1 is just a day. But the turning of the calendar offers us a reminder that things can be different. We can make positive changes, and one of those might be to let ourselves off the hook a little after ten months of constantly living in crisis leadership mode, which our bodies and spirits were not designed to do. Yes, hold the line where safety is concerned. Fulfill your essential duties (and be honest about which ones really are essential, because they’re fewer than you think). But in other areas, model for your also-exhausted laypeople what it means to take care of the beloved image of God inside the vessel God created for it.

Photo by Moritz Knöringer on Unsplash.