Hello, 2013 …

Some snow changed our post-Christmas travel plans, which among other things meant we would be home for New Year’s Eve. My best friend and I have spent all but two {we think …} New Year’s Eves together since 1998. That makes this year our 13th annual celebration that generally include friends, games, food, laughter and talk about whether we’ll actually make it to midnight.

This year we got home from Louisville about New Year’s Eve afternoon and restored some order to the boxes, bags, and suitcase we dumped in our floor as soon as we walked in the door. Greg went to the grocery for a few soft drinks and other food to share with our friends. We decided to order pizza that could be delivered even though we’d had pizza {albeit different pizza} the night before for dinner. And then I realized other than the rolls of toilet paper in each of the bathrooms, we didn’t have any more Angel Soft.

Yep. I was having a party with three other families at my house. That’s eight adults and eight kids. And I didn’t have three full rolls of toilet paper. So I asked Jaclyn if we could have a couple rolls. And, honestly, it didn’t phase me. We have that kind of friendship. And, well, this was our 13th New Year’s Eve party together. Plus there are the near-weekly lunches, everyday texts and conversations, walking laps as a way of socializing and exercising, scrapbook nights, and regular Settlers of Catan game nights.

I realized asking my best friend for some toilet paper was setting the tone for 2013. And I was good with how it was going. Really. 

You see, I’d been thinking about and praying about a word that could be my focus for the new year. Resolutions stress me out. I have a rule-following, perfectionist-striving, Type-A personality. I don’t want to add a list of to-dos to my life and then feel bad when I don’t follow through like I wish I would. But I do appreciate the idea that God doesn’t want to leave me where I am. I’m dreaming some God-sized dreams and learning about how perfection has no place in life, especially motherhood. I knew God would lead me to mesh these two topics with my ordinary life in a way that could be captured in a word.

And when I asked Jaclyn if I could have a couple rolls of toilet paper, the word came to me.

Imperfect.

I want to embrace imperfection, rejoice even when imperfect circumstances come my way, learn from imperfection, and realize imperfection is the process by which God is perfecting me. 

The New Year’s Eve party was fun. Nobody cared about the simple dinner of delivered pizza. Jaclyn didn’t mind sharing a couple rolls of toilet paper {which, by the way, wasn’t even really needed because my husband discovered a nearly full package of Angel Soft in the upstairs hall closet the following day!}. We laughed and shared our lives while all eight children slept in various rooms. Oh, and, we almost made it to the new year together.

How would you sum up your focus for 2013 in one word? 

________
You can read about my 2012 word here. Want more? Subscribe to get “Insights” in your inbox. Or follow me on Twitter.