The Promise of a New Year

Sitting here at 10 minutes after midnight after watching the live streaming New Years Eve Impact concert thinking of what the future might bring. The lyrics to an old Paula Abdul song pop into my, "The promise of a new day." Welcome to 2014, and I can guarantee you there is a promise of a new year this time around. Or not.

What does the new year promise for most of us? What were your resolutions? Lose some weight, make more money, exercise more, eat better, eat less, quit smoking, etc. I have made quite a few of those in the past, and I can say that I have kept a couple of my new years resolutions................for a day, a week and once about a month. Then the excitement wore off and I went back to my old ways.

Why could I never keep a new years resolution? Boil them down and they really meant nothing to me. I was hopeless and depressed most of the time. I hated myself and the only way I could escape that fact was by drinking, drugging, smoking and eating. If I lost weight, then maybe I would like me. I would lose some weight or have more money but when I looked in the mirror all I could think was, "You SUCK JUNKIE! You SUCK DRUNK! You are a FAKE!

That was enough to get me back out there. I saw counselors and psychiatrists. Nothing. I took medication. Useless. I went to college. Nada. I even gave a couple of anonymous programs a shot. Temporary. Nothing worked.

I am smart..........ish. I was in the 150 range when I was younger but I guess that after a couple of decades of drugs/alcohol and multiple head injuries I lost a lot of that. The neuropsychologist told me I had an IQ of 129 now. So I am relatively smart based on standardized testing over the course of 2 days. As a smartish Agnostic I thought that logic and my friends would get me through it. Worthless.

Not saying my friends were worthless, because a couple of them tried to help but they did not succeed. No, I am saying that me using my cognitive abilities was worthless. Logic and the promise of a new day making things better is now a moot point. I know that I tried and failed.

Tomorrow is still going to be filled with disappointments. I will still have bills, people will still let me down, I will be lied to, people will try to use me, people I love will still die, I might get laid off and the engine in my car could blow. That is how life in our world is set up, and nothing my agnostic mind could come up with would allow me to escape that.

If this life was all there was, why work hard? Why not just play? Why help others and volunteer my money and time? Why not just take care of me? Why deal with my problems? Why not continue to use drugs and alcohol to escape them? To quote Queen, "Nothing really matters, anyone can see. Nothing really matters to me."

Then I got saved. I accepted Christ into my life after having a personal experience that convinced me to give God a try. I have never looked back. It has made all of the difference. I did not get promised a new day or a new year to make changes so that my life would be better. No, instead I was promised a new life. I was a new creation and my former self had faded away.

The problems in my past were myriad but the biggest one was that no matter what tomorrow brought it still included me and I was beyond repair. I was broken and there was nothing that could ever fix me. After all, I had tried just about everything secular this world could provide. At the end of the day, I was still me.

In Christ I found that I was perfectly broken, but so was everyone else. Not only that, but my past transgressions that I hated myself for were already forgiven and there was more to my life than just this the shell and this horrible world. The choices I made today mattered for eternity. Big wake up call.

As the fog lifted I began to see there was more to living than just thinking about me. My life changed. When I heard that I was loved and forgiven for all that I had done an attitude of gratitude developed. It is hard to be grateful when the sign of a good day is waking up to an alarm not the shakes next to someone whose name I might or might not know. It is pretty easy when you wake up making a gratitude list after thanking God for another day clean and sober to share his message of hope and salvation.

Gratitude is important, but even more so is hope. If this mundane, evil world is all there is
hope becomes a hard commodity to come by. At least it was for me. Now that I know I am not who I was and there is more to life than just now, I have hope. I have something to look forward to that is eternal and a firm belief that I can share my story with people and impart some of my hope with them.

I went from dealing dope to dealing hope because I found a better life in recovery that was not possible for me as an agnostic. With Christ I have discovered that I truly can do all things, and the things that I want to do now are not about me. I want people to see Christ's amazing grace and abundant love through me.

That is the promise of a new year. I can become more like Christ and be better used as his hands and feet so that more people can hear about the live changing power of the Holy Spirit and gain the hope I have found. Look forward to the New Year and all that we can accomplish for His kingdom and the recovery movement!