Dreams for 2012

In the spirit of the intentionality of New Year's resolutions, but without the pressure, here are some of the goals or things I'd like to see happen in 2012.

•  Continue to read. I love reading, and I think that a culture of reading will make the world a better place.
• Explore new areas to hike. I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I don't ever want to take it for granted. 
• Work out regularly. This is directly related to being able to hike faster and farther.
• Get better at advocating for my patients, both public speaking and writing. Being on the front lines of harm reduction advocacy among Christians is hard. I want to do it well. 
• Treat my job like a ministry, not a job. I don't want to find myself seeing patients and charting because I'm being paid, but because I want to help. I'm going to be intentional about hearing their stories and integrating them with mine.
• Learn more about the Bible. The more I learn, the more false suppositions break down and the deeper my faith becomes. Regent courses will have a lot to do with this.
• Be involved with my community as it grows. Working full time and taking courses makes it easy to let church community slide. I'm going to try to be more intentional about building into Awaken. 
• Learn more from the kids around me. This year, I'll have the privilege of teaching Sunday school during the last month of Lent. I'm looking forward to hearing how they understand Christ's death, and wrestling through it together.
• Be more open to love. I have a lot of love in my life already, and so I don't really look for places where I can show or receive love - I have what I need. I think I'm missing some big opportunities for love to expand and reflect the Kingdom of God. Praying will be the biggest part of this.

I was also given a resolution (and told I had to follow through) at a NYE party I went to. It was: "Bail out Greece." It's going to be a big year for me.