With Christmas Day over, many people’s thoughts turn towards the new year. So many of us, myself included, often make New Year’s resolutions. You know, the kind that will turn you into a beautiful, healthy person with a great marriage, fulfilling career and well behaved children!

I want to say go ahead and change your life if that’s what you want to do! But if you think you need to be different from who you are, you do not! You are precious, you are loved, just as you are.

Perhaps this is the year that we ‘give up’ self improvement? What if this is the year that we enjoy the life we have? What might it be like to rest, to exhale, to relax into the warm embrace of God’s love? A love that is not dependent on what we produce and how the world views us.

My prayer for each one of on this third day of Christmas is that a sense of our worth is born with us and that we experience joy in the ordinariness of our lives.