New Year's Prayer

What more can I add to the others who have so eloquently written New Year's posts about fresh starts and new beginnings?

I'm the one who thinks lofty thoughts, resolves, procrastinates, and then doesn't follow through. What hope do I have? Every year I make my lists - whether with actual pen and paper or just in my private throughts. Lists of habits to begin or break. Lists of goals to accomplish and relationships to work on. Losing weight, eating healthy, exercise, living well. Aspirations in my art. Where do I want to be a year from now in the areas of finance and family and work? I plan and plot the baby steps it will take to achieve my goals. How can I better love, encourage and inspire?

I read my notes. And then read again. A heavy sigh.

Then I lay my list aside and bow my head to pray.

Dear God,
All these goals and resolutions are useless. The plans I make can be interrupted with a single breath from you. You see my beginnings and my ends. You are already there, this place I will be a year from now. I have no hope of making any lasting change in my life without you. You are my hope. You fulfill all the aspirations I have. You breathe life into dying relationships and dying dreams. I give this year to you. This is the only resolve I can make.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.