3 Essential New Year’s Resolutions for Parents

You may be the new-year-clean-slate type of person with all your resolutions and aspirations as you ring in 2019; or you may not be. As for us, we’re both into making new goals for the new year. Eunice is pretty realistic in her resolutions while I usually get too excited and take on more than I can handle. However, we do believe there are 3 essential new year’s resolutions for parents of young children. These resolutions will keep you healthy, your marriage thriving, and your faith strong.

Resolution #1: Grow in Spiritual Disciplines

Grow in Bible reading and prayer this year so that the joy of the Lord will be your strength. The Israelites experienced this strength in Nehemiah 8 after Ezra had read them the Law and their eyes were opened to understand it. The words from God gave them strength to joyfully move forward into their new future in the promised land; they responded gladly in prayer and praise.

Similarly we as parents need this same joy in the Lord to keep us strong from all that life throws at us. Things won’t be easy this year. Living in a world cursed by the fall, there is no doubt that the future will have its challenges, sorrows, and disappointments. That’s why it’s so important to grow in your devotions and prayer life.

The psalmist says that the promises found in Scripture are “comfort in my affliction” (Ps. 119:50). So keep your chin up! Get into the habit of reading your Bible regularly this year. You need to hear encouragement, assurance, and even correction from God daily. Allow the truths that you learn to linger in your mind throughout the day; make mental notes to stop and reflect on them so you don’t forget. Also, take the spare minutes in your busy schedule to pray in God’s presence. Commitment to these two disciplines will keep you grounded to face the year with confidence.

Check out these amazing resources to help you get into the spiritual groove:

Women of the Word is a great intro to help you get deeper into the Bible and apply it to life. Actually you can get FREE this in Ebook here courtesy of Crossway.

Praying with Paul is a wonderful guide on how the Apostle’s prayers can shape our own.

Here’s also some free online resources you can use:

• Grace To You (ministry of Grace Community Church) has some excellent devotionals you can use.
• Logos has a wonderful bible app where you can download free resources to help with your Bible study. The best free resource is the Faithlife Study Bible which will help you in your study.
• Lastly, Banner of Truth provides a daily prayer from their famous Valley of Vision prayer book that will help shape and refresh your prayer life.

Resolution #2: Get More Sleep

Do yourself a huge favor by getting more sleep in your life. Today we live in a world where everybody is overworked and under-slept. We try to do so much, whether that’s for our careers, children, or keeping up a certain lifestyle, that we hardly have any time to rest or recover. As you can see in Eunice’s life, things can get pretty hectic! Since we are left with so little time for R&R, we inevitably trim down our precious sleep time for more eye-straining, brain-numbing movies on Netflix.

David Murray in his book Reset, tells us that the amount of sleep we get reveals a lot about what we believe about God and about ourselves. “For example,” he says, “if we pride ourselves in sleeping only five hours a night, we preach the following truths:

• I don’t trust God with my work, my church, or my family.
• I don’t respect how my Creator has made me.
• I don’t believe that the soul and the body are linked.
• I don’t need to demonstrate my rest in Christ.
• And I worship idols.”

I was one of these people and God has used this book to jolt me into taking a marathon approach to serving God and living life.

Not to mention, there are endless lists of health benefits from getting the recommended 8 hours of sleep a night. First of all, your alertness, productivity, judgement, mood, memory, and sex drive are heightened (seriously, after 1 week of sleeping 7.5 hours – I feel the difference). Also, you’re less prone to get depression, gain weight, and get into a car accident. Check out this infographic some more negative effects of sleep deprivation:

So this year, resolve to consistently get around 8 hours of sleep per night. You might miss out on some entertainment; you might have to go to bed a lot earlier. However, sleeping more will ensure better health, more energy, and a more fruitful life in the new year.

Resolution #3: Growing Deeper in Your Marriage

This year, commit to refreshing your marriage. With children in the picture, it gets harder and harder to find time to invest in each other. Even worse, you two have grown to enjoy the company of your kids more than just being together. If that’s the case, your marriage relationship could be headed in an unhealthy trajectory.

Avoid this tragedy! Instead, chart your new year by refocusing your belief that your marriage is sacred and is to be protected – even from such wonderful things such as children. Unity is between husband and wife. Don’t let the craziness of life and parenthood draw your heart away from your lover. We all know how easy it is to take the most important relationship with the most important person for granted. Maybe you’ve been coasting for a while, but it’s never too late to take the wheel and change course. Remember that on your wedding day, you each made a promise to love and cherish one another. Take up that promise this year with a fresh motivation to GO DEEPER with your spouse!

The best way to initiate is to just sit down and figure out how move forward together:

1. Admit your fault in not prioritizing your marriage and repent before the Lord together. This could be an opportunity to address any baggage or bitterness that has sprouted between you.
2. Compose new goals in areas of your marriage that you can work towards together (such as boost time spent together, less TV, increase intimacy, committing to a weekend away/more dates, find your love language, etc)
3. Reach out to your pastor, elder, counselor, or older couple to review your plan and help you work toward it.

These 3 essential new year’s resolutions for parents are what you need to pursue this year.  They provide an anchor to ensure that you are not tossed up and around by the difficulties that you may face. Also, they keep the real priorities of your life in focus, so that your year can be glorifying to God and good for you. Are you going to implement these into your life? What resolution most inspired you? Let us know below!

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